Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard (DASCH) is a project to preserve and digitize images recorded on astronomical photographic plates created before astronomy became dominated by digital imaging. It is a major project of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Over 500,000 glass plates held by the Harvard College Observatory are to be digitized.[1] The digital images will contribute to time domain astronomy, providing over a hundred years of data that may be compared to current observations.
DASCH | |
---|---|
Commercial? | No |
Location | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
Owner | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian |
Founder | Jonathan E. Grindlay, principal investigator |
Established | 2001 (23 years ago) (2001) |
Funding | National Science Foundation |
Status | Active |
Website | dasch.rc.fas.harvard.edu |
From 1885 until 1992, the Harvard College Observatory repeatedly photographed the night sky using observatories in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Over half a million glass photographic plates are stored in the observatory archives providing a unique resource to astronomers. The Harvard collection is over three times the size of the next largest collection of astronomical photographic plates and is almost a quarter of all known photographic images of the sky on glass plates. Those plates were seldom used after digital imaging became the standard near the end of the twentieth century.[2] The scope of the Harvard plate collection is unique in that it covers the entire sky for a very long period of time.