What happens to old data? How do scientists get data from all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum?
Problem #1: Getting New Results from Old Data For thousands of years, astronomers have been studying the sky. They started looking at the sky with their eyes, creating star charts and maps. In the 1600s, astronomers began using telescopes, allowing them to see many more stars and galaxies. Over the past several hundred years, telescopes have gotten more and more powerful, allowing astronomers to see millions more stars and galaxies. When computers were invented, astronomers began to use computers to control their telescopes. Today, telescopes are so powerful that they can see thousands or millions of sky objects every night. Sophisticated computer programs identify and analyze the objects seen in the telescope images. These powerful new computer-equipped telescopes are making observations faster than astronomers can keep up with them. Today, when an astronomer uses a telescope to make an observation, she studies the new observation carefully, seeing how it fits with other observations
