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Article ID: CBB001320842

A New Looking Glass: Historic Harvard Plates (2013)

Clabby, Catherine (Author)

American Scientist
Volume: 101
Pages: 142--143
Publication date: 2013
Language: English

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Photography, astronomical Telescopes Astronomy Photographs Digitization 20th century, early 19th century 20th century, late Harvard University

Nothing in the world compares to a collection of some 500,000 historic photographic plates of telescope images obtained overa century by the Harvard College Observatory (HCO). The glass plates originated from Harvard astronomers' frequent and systematic survey of the sky in both the northern and southern hemispheres between 1885 and 1991 At the HCO today, scientists are making digital copies of the images, not simply to preserve artifacts but to push a new field of research forward. Data collected over such a long period are invaluable to time domain astronomy (TDA), which hunts for clues to unknown stellar and galactic phenomena revealed by the variation in the brightness of stars and galactic nuclei over time. Jonathan Grindlay leads the Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard (DASCH) project. He explained its promise to American Scientist contributing editor Catherine Clabby.

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