The Laboratory Building

The electronic workshop and the IT department of the observatory are located in the Laboratory Building.

Since the foundation of the observatory, research in astronomy and astrophysics have changed fundamentally. While in former times scientists interpreted astronomical images on photographic plates and performed theoretical calculations on paper, today, computers play a vital role in all areas of work. Modern computers provide enormous data streams transmitted via the internet and processed by ingenious algorithms. The use of artificial intelligence is now becoming increasingly prevalent. With the help of complex simulations performed on supercomputers, scientists can understand observed phenomena. Some of the necessary computers and data storage are located in the Laboratory Building. Often astronomers need larger and more powerful supercomputers for their calculations though. In this case, they use computers located in the computing centre of Universität Hamburg and around the world.

Fig.: Part of a server rack with memory blocks (RAID systems from numerous interconnected hard discs) and workstations with modern high-performance processors for analysis of simulations and observational data.

 

Digital Plate Archive
 

Since its invention, photography has been used by astronomers to study the cosmos. In order to avoid distortions on the images of the sky, light-sensitive emulsions were applied on glass plates, the so-called photoplates. In a unique project, 45,000 photoplates from the past 100 years (the oldest ones date from 1912) were completely digitised. For optimal protection, the original plates must be kept in an air-conditioned archive at constant temperature and humidity. Today, scientists and amateur astronomers have free access to the digital images in the online archive plate-archive.hs.uni-hamburg.de (see QR code below) with numerous search functions.

In the 1980s, electronic CCDs, like those in digital cameras, fully replaced the photoplates in astronomical photography. Nonetheless, the digital photoplate archive of Hamburg Observatory is of invaluable scientific and documentary value.

 

 Fig. 1 (left side): Section of an image taken by the Lippert astrograph from 1922. The high resolution (2400 dpi, 1.3 GB approximately) scan of the original plate can be downloaded on: plate-archive.hs.uni-hamburg.de (see also the QR code).

Fig. 2 (right side): Images of the Pleiades (M45), an open star cluster visible to the naked eye.