SoylentNews

tonyPick writes:

Universe Today has an article on using astronomical images captured on glass plates which date back to the 19th century to study the change in stars and galaxies over the past 130 years.

“The images captured on these plates remain incredibly valuable to science, representing a century of data on stars and galaxies that can never be replaced,” writes astronomer Michael Shara, who is Curator in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, who discussed the plates and their significance in a new episode of AMNH’s video series, “Shelf Life.”

The history of the plates, and the effort to digitise the images and use them to generate data, are discussed at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Shelf Life page, and links data sets and volunteer efforts to transcribe the associated astronomy logbooks from Harvard's "Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard" (DASCH) Project.