Astronomy's Heritage Data: Where the past lies ahead

Abstract

Astronomy, like bird-watching, belongs to everyone. Throughout its history, projects have attempted to survey and monitor the skies, providing invaluable baselines for more future studies. In particular, the distant past becomes even more relevant as a marker of slow changes and subtle drifts. Astronomy owns several million archived plates; they include spectra as well as images. Unfortunately, plans to digitize them have not yet achieved sufficient attention and funding apart from the DASCH project at Harvard Observatory and a new initiative in Shanghai.Â