Data mining the stars: The virtualized telescope that transformed astronomy

In the 1990s, astrophysicist Dr. Alex Szalay and computer scientist Dr. Jim Gray had a brainstorm: What if a database could be turned into a virtual telescope that could then be data-mined? Open access to such data could revolutionize the field of astronomy.

With time, the idea would become the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an international collaboration of hundreds of scientists at dozens of institutions.