Archival jackpot

Brandon’s post concerning Galaxy Zoo was a great reminder of the programs available for anyone and everyone to be involved in the astronomical discovery process. There was a recent Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD) submitted by a philosophy professor that compiled four images from the Voyager spacecraft (on August 24, 1989). The image is included as Figure 1 this post, but can also be found here.

Figure 1. Neptune's moon, Despina, casts a shado on the gas giant. Image compiled from 4 archival images from the Voyager spacecraft by Ted Stryk (a philosophy professor).

There is just so much astronomical data out there! And many of the publically-funded projects are required to release the data and images for public use—yes, anyone can use it. This data is referred to as archival. For example, the Hubble Space Telescope has its site where you can download thousands of images and lots of archived data. Many other space and ground-based telescopes have archived their data. And this is not just a fun thing for the public; it is also very convenient for astronomy researchers as well. I have read many papers that have solely used this archived data for their analysis. Brian Kloppenborg, who received his PhD from DU a couple of years ago, was able to find almost 200 years of archived data on the star system he was studying, epsilon Aurigae. The data wasn’t exactly ideal, but it is hard to beat the amount of time epsilon Aurigae has been observed. Funny thing about that object: we still have dozens of questions! So, not all the answers will be found there, but it should be helpful.

I guess this is a plug for both public citizens and astronomy researchers to use the available archives. I need to use it more in my own research. It is a great resource and provides lots of evidence for observation proposals, eg I need to observe [object] at [wavelength], especially because there is no equivalent archival data.

Has anyone effectively used the archives in their research?