We have used the Automated Plate Scanner (APS) at the University of Minnesota to digitize glass copies of the blue and red plates of the original Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS I) with |b| > 20°. The APS Image Database is a database of all digitized images larger than the photographic noise threshold. It includes all of the matched images in the object catalog, as well as those unmatched images above the noise threshold. The matched image data of the catalog has the advantage of confirming the reality of the image. This is especially important for small images near the plate limit. But these are not all of the detected real images; very blue or very red faint objects may be excluded by this matching requirement. The image database allows information on them to be retrieved, and is therefore a valuable complement to the object catalog. The operation of the APS and the scanning procedures are described in detail in Pennington et al. (1993). We are now processing plate data into the image database. A set of query forms, a tutorial and documentation can be found at http://isis.spa.umn.edu/IDB/homepage.idb.html.

The subject of this symposium, Multi-Wavelength Sky Surveys naturally invokes a discussion of methods of astronomical object identification and classification: Given a set of objects detected at a certain waveband, how does one integrate the new sources with previous data? The ALADIN system (Paillou et al. 1994) of the CDS is a software package designed to tackle this problem: It provides simultaneous access to digitized sky photographs, catalogs and databases to facilitate direct, visual comparison of user data with previously classified data, as well as automatic source extraction and calibration tools.

Designing and implementing the Science Archive for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (Gunn et. al 1992) has presented several unique architectural obstacles. First, the final archive will be large; the cumulative data products will exceed tens of Terabytes. Second, the data will be complex; extracted parameter catalogs will contain links to images, spectra, and objects in other wavelength catalogs. Third, the archive will be widely distributed allowing transparent world-wide access to the available data. Finally, the archive is expected to remain viable well into the next century.

The original GSC-I (Jenkner et al. 1990) which contains 25 million entries and requires approximately 1GB of storage was at the edge of technological capability at the time catalogue construction began in 1984. At that time, a custom coded database was built since the relational databases of the era were unsuited to the HST-specific access requirements. A second generation GSC is now being constructed (Lasker et al. 1995), with an estimated 10 billion entries and a size of 2 Terabytes. The current generation of object-oriented database (OODB) systems are more suited to the needs of large astronomical catalogues and are being adopted by many large-scale projects. In a joint effort between the Space Telescope Science Institute and Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino, we are currently designing such an OODB for the Guide Star Catalogues and are implementing a prototype using the GSC-I data.

The ADC archive contains more than 800 catalogs and extensive tables from more than 750 journal articles. The archive is increasing steadily at the rate of about 20 data sets per month. This archive can be accessed either by anonymous FTP or by a World Wide Web (WWW) browser at http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/

The results of astronomical surveys include 1) catalogs containing anywhere from a few to many million objects, 2) data products used to generate the catalogs (e.g., images or spectra), 3) publications and 4) object based compilations of information from many sources. The ubiquitous growth in the Internet and the dramatic reduction in the cost of mass storage systems now allows instant global access to this information. Astrophysics on-line services have grown up with the Internet, and represent an invaluable resource whose access is a routine part of any research project. Unfortunately users are also faced with searching and accessing multiple sites with different content, access and response methods. There can also be inconsistencies amongst the various systems, which can involve extra effort to resolve. A network-integrated astrophysics system has long been sought because it would remove multiple user interfaces and allow much simpler integration of services. In an era of shrinking budgets, the issue is how to achieve this in a cost effective manner. This review gives an overview of the current situation and discusses the likely evolution towards a network-integrated astrophysics system.

We present here some of the ideas and questions mentioned by the panelists and other participants during the discussion that immediately preceded Ofer Lahav's concluding remarks. Official panelists were George Djorgovski, Michael Disney, Ofer Lahav, and Virginia Trimble (chair). The topics of the posters are very briefly summarized as well.

An astronomer's career can be viewed in a 3-dimensional space where the (nearly orthogonal) axes are :

1. – the objects of interest (from planets to the Universe),

2. – techniques (from instrument design to analytic calculations),

3. – the wavelength (from the radio to gamma rays).