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Science

Big Data in Astronomy

January 20, 2014

Kai Polsterer works at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS). He wants to help astronomers deal with the masses of digital observation data coming from today's high-tech telescopes as well as archived data of past astronomical measurements.

https://p.dw.com/p/1Atmt

The data in the scientific archive of the European Southern Observatory, the ESO, alone comprises 65 terabytes and would fill 14,000 DVDs. Polsterer is trying to develop intelligent computer programs that could automatically track down new celestial objects in the stored data.