back to article Boffins release 44-MEEELLION-star Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Anglo-Australian boffins have published a new survey of the northern sky that describes 44 million stellar objects and finds 250,000 have changed in the last 60 years. Dubbed “A Precision Multi-band Two-epoch Photometric Catalog of 44 Million Sources in the Northern Sky from a Combination of the USNO-B and Sloan Digital Sky …

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  1. Frumious Bandersnatch

    about 250,000 objects changed brightness significantly over the 1949-2008 span of the surveys

    So I guess that by using Little's result and quantifying what "significant" means, you can calculate the average age of all the stars surveyed? Or can we know only the star formation rate or average lifespan, but not both (in isolation)? Seems fascinating either way.

  2. Don Jefe

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't 'Big Data' refer to the unstructured garbage generated by social network type entities whereas this was just a big ass bunch of very structured data?

  3. naylorjs
    Coat

    I blame global warming.

    I'll get my coat.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      You'll need it. The globes in question are a long journey away.

  4. FartingHippo
    Alien

    Changing brightness

    Well, duh. Always going to happen with all those Dyson spheres being built.

  5. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

    But we still don't know where the Second Foundation is!

  6. Francis Boyle Silver badge

    That's one helluva funky

    disco ball.

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