Stars in Dusty Filing Cabinets

A campaign to digitize old sky photographs is squeezing new discoveries out of observations dating back to the mid-19th century. , A campaign to digitize old sky photographs is squeezing new discoveries out of observations dating back to the mid-19th century. Proponents argue that old plates provide the only way modern astronomers can study astrophysical phenomena on time scales longer than a few decades. Preserving and scanning old plates, however, has been slow to win support from the broader astronomy community and funding agencies.