Astronomy is facing a data avalanche
Multi-Terabyte (soon: multi-Petabyte) sky surveys and archives over a broad range of wavelengths
Billions of sources, hundreds of attributes per source
1 nanoSky (HDF-S)
1 microSky (DPOSS)
The changing face
of observational astronomy
* Large digital sky surveys are becoming dominant source of data in astronomy: > 100 TB, growing rapidly
o SDSS, 2MASS, DPOSS, GSC, FIRST, NVSS, RASS, IRAS, QUEST, GALEX, SST; CMBR experiments; Microlensing experiments; NEAT, LONEOS, and other searches for Solar system objects
o Digital libraries: ADS, astro-ph, NED, CDS, NSSDC
o Observatory archives: HST, CXO, space and ground-based
o Future: PanSTARRS, LSST, and other synoptic surveys; astrometric missions, GW detectors
* Data sets orders of magnitude larger, more complex, more homogeneous than in the past
* Roughly 1 TB/Sky/band/epoch
o Human Genome is < 1 GB, Library of Congress ~ 20 TB
Toward a “new astronomy”
* Past: Observations of small, carefully selected samples (often with a priori prejudices) of objects in one or a few wavelength bands
And much more about "new astronomy" can be found at
Astronomy is facing a data avalanche.ppt