The diversity of participants at this event demonstrates the importance of this international project :
- Valéry Lainey (Observatoire de Paris – PSL, LTE)
- Louise Devoy (Royal Observatory Greenwich)
- Elizabeth Sanders (Royal Observatory Greenwich)
- Laura McCann (Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)
- Vincent Robert (Observatoire de Paris – PSL, LTE, IPSA)
- Paolo Tanga (Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur – CNRS)
- Carl Murray (Queen Mary University of London)
- Caroline Terquem (Université Paris Cité – Observatoire de Paris, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris).
Observatories around the world hold tens (even hundreds) of thousands of plates in their archives ! Only a tiny fraction of these have been analyzed, mainly for the scientific needs of the time and those of the first space probes, using measurement methods that are now obsolete and inaccurate. There is therefore a huge reservoir of observational data, the initial or renewed analysis of which can provide first-rate scientific data covering a period of nearly a century.
What is NAROO ? (New Astrometric Reduction of Old Observations) ?
NAROO is a center for digitizing astronomical photographic plates. It is built around a new-generation submicrometric scanner dedicated to measuring astrophotographic plates and analyzing old observations. It is located at the Meudon site of the Paris Observatory and is managed by a team of researchers from the LTE and IPSA, an aeronautical and space engineering school.
Photographic plates are to telescopes what film is to cameras : the analog means of capturing and preserving an image. Used since the 1890s by the first modern astronomers, they were gradually replaced in 1998 by CCD cameras and other CMOS image sensors.
NAROO is a high-tech machine and one of the few in the world capable of scanning photographic plates with sub-micron precision (one thousandth of a millimeter). The ultimate goal is to produce digital images of maximum precision in order to extract all useful astronomical information from this type of medium.
The data collected improves our understanding of the long-term astrometric positions of planets, natural satellites, and small bodies. It thus enriches and complements the data from the Gaia space mission for the development of its star catalog. Indeed, the evolution of the positions of bodies over time, which can be observed using photographic plates, makes it possible to refine the dynamics of their movement.
The scientific team works in partnership with numerous national and international observatories with the aim of digitizing their collections for scientific purposes, as was the case with the Greenwich Observatory. The digitized material will also be made available online to the professional community and the general public, with the launch of a participatory science campaign planned for the near future !
Learn more
The CNRS video presentation of NAROO
The photo report by CNRS Images
Contact
Vincent Robert, LTE/IPSA
Vincent.Robert@obspm.fr
