History and relevance

The development of public archives of digital observations was largely driven by space astronomy.

Increasing pressures have been put on ground-based observatories to preserve observations in forms that are easily comprehensible by the non-specialist. Provision for archival research is now coming to be regarded as essential and feasible. Many new telescope designs feature built-in archiving facilities.

Archives of photographic spectra - plate stores - have always constituted a recognized observatory resource. Plates were filed, catalogued on cards, and jealously guarded by a plate librarian. Just a few contents catalogues are now on-line.

The advent of digital detectors created a new genre of spectroscopic observations that were immediately more accessible for modern analysis methods, and most plate stores subsequently closed. Nevertheless, the photographic spectra remain an enormously important and, for the large part, unrepeatable resource for research. There is an overwhelming scientific need to access digitally the information contained in at least a selection of these spectrograms. But the digitisation must be carried out soon , before the necessary equipment becomes obsolete.

Relevance of historic spectra

You may like to follow up some typical questions concerning the relevance of historic observations to modern research.