Objectivity, Inc. Case Study: Sloan Digital Sky Survey

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Industry: Data Intensive Science

The Challenge:

The objective of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is nothing less than cataloguing everything in the sky. The $32 million project, led by Johns Hopkins and Chicago's FermiLab, is to produce a new digital survey of every star, galaxy, quasar, etc.

The Objectivity/DB Solution:

Among the leading-edge traits that Objectivity/DB shows in this project are its ability to take in, analyze, store and share data. The previous survey, now more than 50 years old, consists of analog glass photographic plates, which dramatically limit distribution, amount of information, and accuracy of information. SDSS has constructed a new 2.5m telescope that will gather digital information including luminosity, spectral intensities and more, for all objects in space. Raw information will go into the database, as well as analysis results that collect that information into identified objects, resulting in a catalogue of 100 million objects.

The database will be accessible to scholars, and parts of it even to schools and the public, via an Internet site developed in conjunction with Microsoft. It is expected to take five years to map the northern celestial sphere.