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posted by martyb on Friday March 27 2015, @11:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the looking-back-in-time dept.

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.

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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by buswolley on Friday March 27 2015, @12:54PM

    by buswolley (848) on Friday March 27 2015, @12:54PM (#163171)

    Commentary time travel!

    --
    subicular junctures
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Doctor on Friday March 27 2015, @04:01PM

    by Doctor (3677) on Friday March 27 2015, @04:01PM (#163215)

    Bit of a click-bait title there. Not that it isn't interesting subject matter, but do we really have to copy the worst in "marketing" of articles?

    --
    "Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Doctor
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by tonyPick on Friday March 27 2015, @04:35PM

      by tonyPick (1237) on Friday March 27 2015, @04:35PM (#163230) Homepage Journal

      I was in two minds myself, but went for something close to the original article title. And since the "time travel to the stars" bit gets used in TFA title and at the Shelf Life page title I didn't feel too bad about using it for the SN title submission - I figured if it was too far off an editor would step in. (submitter here).

  • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday March 28 2015, @10:48AM

    by isostatic (365) on Saturday March 28 2015, @10:48AM (#163499) Journal

    The coordinates system, having to update the charts to account for movement, and to be honest the number of women involved in the field even 100 years ago.