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."
Pisgah? (Score:2)
Pisgah? Pshaw!
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.
Re: (Score:2)
How the fuck did you manage to spin this as a political issue?
You seem to have plenty of money for cocaine. Maybe want to dial that down a bit.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Beta is here to stay!
It lost out to VHS years ago. Are you some kind of diehard Sony fanboy or something?
Nothing to do with Pisgah Crater in California.... (Score:2)
I assumed it might, but these folks are in North Carolina. I guess Pisgah is a more common surname than I guessed?
Re:Nothing to do with Pisgah Crater in California. (Score:5, Informative)
Hebrew for 'Mountain.'
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No info on the camera! (Score:1)
$60K for an X/Y table?
Re:No info on the camera! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. Required for the stability to scan with the precision and accuracy needed for both astrometry and spectroscopy. You need zero backlash positioners and a rock-solid (pun intended) surface.
Less expensive than the alternatives, such as refitting a PDS 2020G such as was used to generate Space Telescope Science Institute's digitized sky survey ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ).
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Re:No info on the camera! (Score:5, Funny)
Dono If I want to be told about a death star heading to earth only to be told weeks later it was a stitching artifact.
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The difficulty with merging images could be the sparse nature of the data on the plate. In doing something like the visual6502.org dieshots there's plenty of data with which to do tiling; astronomical imagery is pretty sparse. So, while tiling will likely have to be done, the basic accuracy and precision of the platform (including the flatness and purity of the camera optics) is very important, and quite expensive.
Oooh the discoveries (Score:5, Interesting)
how to find plates from a specific date? (Score:2)
DASCH is doing this too (Score:1)
Search for your favorite star here:
http://dasch.rc.fas.harvard.ed... [harvard.edu]
I can't wait for the new astrological discoveries (Score:2)
that will be possible as with the release of all this data!
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Don't know how many astrological discoveries there may be, since astrology looks into the future and this is looking into the past. But I do get the reference......
Yerkes study (Score:1)