Astroinformatics : Image processing and analysis of digitized astronomical data with web-based implementation

Abstract

The newly born area of Astroinformatics has arisen as an interdisciplinary domain from Astronomy and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Recently, four institutes of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences launched a joint project called “Astroinformatics”. The main goal of the project is the development of methods and techniques for preservation and exploitation of the scientific, cultural and historic heritage of the astronomical observations. The Wide-Field Plate Data Base is an ICT project of the Institute of Astronomy, which has been launched in 1991, supported by International Astronomic Union [1]. Now over two million photographic plates, obtained with professional telescopes at 125 observatories worldwide, are identified
and collected in this database. Digitization of photographic plates is an actual task for astronomical society. So far 150 000 plates have been digitized through several European research programs. As a result, a huge amount of data is collected (with about 2TB in size). The access, manipulation and data mining of this data is a serious challenge for the ICT community. In this article we discuss goals, tasks and achievements in the area of Astroinformatics.