1. http://astrometry.netroweis@cs.toronto.edu Making the Sky Searchable: Automatically Organizing the World’s Astronomical Data Sam Roweis, Dustin Lang & Keir Mierle University of Toronto David Hogg & Michael Blanton New York University

2. http://astrometry.netroweis@cs.toronto.edu Organize All Astronomical Data Vision: Take every astronomical image ever taken in the history of the world and unify them into a single accurately annotated and easily searchable database. We want to include all modern professional telescope surveys plus all amateur photos, satellite images, historical plate archives… How could this ever be possible?

3. http://astrometry.netroweis@cs.toronto.edu You show me a picture of the night sky. I tell you where on the sky it came from. Core Technology: Starfield Search

4. http://astrometry.netroweis@cs.toronto.edu Example (a million times easier) Find this “field” on this “sky”.

5. http://astrometry.netroweis@cs.toronto.edu Example (a million times easier) Find this “field” on this “sky”.

6. http://astrometry.netroweis@cs.toronto.edu (Inverted) Index of Features To solve this problem, we employ the classic idea of an “inverted index”. We define a set of “features” for any particular view of the sky (image). Then we make an (inverted) index, telling us which views on the sky exhibit certain (combinations of) feature values. When we see a new test image, we compute which features are present, and use our inverted index to look up which possible views from the catalogue also have those feature values. Index is built from a huge all-sky catalogue.

7. http://astrometry.netroweis@cs.toronto.edu “Solving” is Easy as 1-2-3 1) Get your image. 2) Upload it to us. 3) Your exact location + lots of other data!

8. http://astrometry.netroweis@cs.toronto.edu Astronomy Picture of the Day ?

12. 0.5 degrees

16. 7 arcminutes

20. 1.5 degrees

24. 7.5 degrees

28. 68 degrees

30. 1.4 degrees

31. http://astrometry.netroweis@cs.toronto.edu What have we done already Built a prototype at astrometry.net. Resolved all (340K) Sloan Digital Sky Survey images blind. Solved historical plates (~1810). Tested a live service (professional & amateur astronomers as users.) Created a “picture of the day” layer for upcoming Google Sky. This was all done by two grad students and minimal resources.

32. http://astrometry.netroweis@cs.toronto.edu What we need to do next Prototype is extremely successful. Algorithms are highly sophisticated. Now we need to scale up. Next steps: –Get funding & resources. –Work with researchers, amateur & professional astronomers and others to understand/develop needs. –Go live and change science! + You?

33. http://astrometry.netroweis@cs.toronto.edu The Core Team David Hogg Michael BlantonKeir Mierle Dustin Lang Sam Roweis The real talent!