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"Low-Cost Approach to Scanning Historic Glass Plates Yields an Astronomical Surprise"
A new process highlights an innovative way to get old glass plates online… and turned up a potential extra-galactic discovery over a century old.
Posted on January 27, 2021 by David Dickinson
You never know what new discoveries might be hiding in old astronomical observations. For almost a hundred years starting in the late 19th century, emulsion-coated dry glass plate photography was the standard of choice used by large astronomical observatories and surveys for documenting and imaging the sky. These large enormous glass plate collections are still out there around the world, filed away in observatory libraries and university archives. Now, a new project shows how we might bring the stories told on these old plates back to light.
More than an estimated 2.4 million glass plates are out there in collections in North America alone. These were taken starting in the 1890s right up until the 1970s, when CCD (Charged Couple Device) detectors started to come online for astronomy. Of these, only an estimated 400,000 plates have been digitized to research quality, most notably by the DASCH (the Digital Access to the Sky Century at Harvard) and the international APPLAUSE (The Archives of Photographic Plates for Astronomical USE) projects.
A team from the University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the Kavali Institute for Cosmological Astrophysics wondered if there might be an easier way to bring these old plates into the modern digital era.
{more}
https://www.universetoday.com/149644/low-cost-approach-to-scanning-historic-glass-plates-yields-an-astronomical-surprise/
Posted on January 27, 2021 by David Dickinson
You never know what new discoveries might be hiding in old astronomical observations. For almost a hundred years starting in the late 19th century, emulsion-coated dry glass plate photography was the standard of choice used by large astronomical observatories and surveys for documenting and imaging the sky. These large enormous glass plate collections are still out there around the world, filed away in observatory libraries and university archives. Now, a new project shows how we might bring the stories told on these old plates back to light.
More than an estimated 2.4 million glass plates are out there in collections in North America alone. These were taken starting in the 1890s right up until the 1970s, when CCD (Charged Couple Device) detectors started to come online for astronomy. Of these, only an estimated 400,000 plates have been digitized to research quality, most notably by the DASCH (the Digital Access to the Sky Century at Harvard) and the international APPLAUSE (The Archives of Photographic Plates for Astronomical USE) projects.
A team from the University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the Kavali Institute for Cosmological Astrophysics wondered if there might be an easier way to bring these old plates into the modern digital era.
{more}
https://www.universetoday.com/149644/low-cost-approach-to-scanning-historic-glass-plates-yields-an-astronomical-surprise/
Looks like they discovered a supernova by scanning in these old plate, and that's just the tip of the iceberg!