Unlocking 120 Years of Images of the Night Sky 29
First time accepted submitter MCastelaz writes "Researchers at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit foundation located at a former NASA Tracking Station, are preparing to unlock 120 years of images of the night sky. The images are embedded on more than 220,000 astronomical photographic plates and films dating back to 1898 collected from over 40 institutions and observatories in the United States. These plates and films are housed in the Astronomical Photographic Data Archive at PARI. The researchers plan to begin digitizing these collections this year, bringing these fantastic observational works by generations of astronomers who spent more than a million hours at telescopes to the general public and scientists worldwide. The PARI researchers are calling this the Astronomy Legacy Project. The researchers will use an extremely high precision, fast, scanning machine to do the work. To get the project off the ground, they are beginning with a crowdfunding campaign and the funds from that campaign will be used to buy the digitizing machine."
Re:120 years of images? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any given film is not always that important. Its the difference between films over time.
Besides, film tech was pretty awesome quite a while ago.
I wish they accepted PayPal. Sent them some shekels anyway. Long way to go to get that 60,000 scanner.