The History Of Scanning at STScI

STScI ACDSD MASTCASB Scanning Home

Products
GSC
DSS
GSPC
Science

Publications

Data Access
Related Science 
Missions
HST
GEMINI
VLT
NGST
Virtual Observatory
XMM
Facilities
Plate Scanning
COMPASS ooDB 
Staff Pages

Last Updated Jan 2001

Copyright © 2001 The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

1982: Two Perkin-Elmer PDS 2020G microdensitometers were delivered to Rowland Hall on the JHU campus, where the Space Telescope Science Institute spent its infancy.

1982: Plate vault specifications, designed for archival storage of photographic plates, and stable scanning conditions, are provided by Barry Lasker, GSSS project scientist; Jane Russell, GSSS astrometrist; and Jim Kinsey, PDS engineer.

1983: Muller building opens. The microdensitometers are delivered to the new building. The Perkin-Elmer engineer who rode down with them in the freight elevator is reported to have commented "That was a fast ride!!" upon his safe but rapid arrival.

1983: First plate shipments arrive from Palomar, ROE, and Siding Springs.

1984: Custom upgrades to the microdensitometers are completed by Barry Lasker, Jim Kinsey, Anatoly Evserov, Bob Denman, and Marc Damashek. These included the replacement of the Haidenhan encoder by a laser interferometer system for position measurement, an upgraded logarithmic amplifier, and the installation of a custom "cat's-eye" shaped aperture, to be used in conjunction with an electronic Bessel filter to blur the effective aperture into a Gaussian shape.

1985: Production scanning at 25 micron resolution for the GSC1 begins!

1988: The last plate is scanned for GSC1. Scanning activities continue with the digitization of the POSS-I E plates, which would later become part of the Digitized Sky Survey.

1990: The completed Guide Star Catalog is published, and the Hubble Space Telescope is launched.

1991: Work begins on redesigning and rebuilding the PDS microdensitometers into custom multi channel laser illuminated GAMMA scanning machines to support scanning of the second epoch surveys, PSS-II and SES.

1992: First plate shipments of original plates for the new surveys are received from Palomar and ROE, for scanning and return.

1992: 15 micron scanning begins!

1994: The Digitized Sky Survey, a 10x compressed version of the POSS E and SERC F plates, is published.

1994: Multi channel, laser illuminated scanning begins on one machine.

1995: The rebuilding of both scanning machines is completed by Barry Lasker, Gretchen Greene, Knute Ray, and Bruce Douglas.

2000: Scanning of the PSS-II J and F surveys are completed.

2001: Scanning of the SES F survey and the PSS-II infrared survey are completed.