The Image Archive of Hamburg Observatory

Contrary to the photograhic plate-archives the image-archives are a collection of documents, text-documents, drawings, technical drawings and photos, which were scanned from photoplates, films and paper and for which no or hardly any metadata are available (e,g. only date and/or content). Therefore, a search mask would be of no help and we implemented instead an optical search technique.

Starting with the directory tree where each folder is given a meaningful notation, one can work down to the lowest subdirectory by double-clicking each level. The contents of the folder are displayed as thumbnails in rows and columns. Expanded directories can be closed again by another double-click.

Using the mouse to glide slowly over the thumbnails, an enlarged image will immediately pop up so that detailed viewing is possible. Clicking on the image will lead to a web page where a download-link for the high resolution scan is available. Clicking on the image again will lead back to the 'optical search mask', where the user can select one or more images with a right mouse click for downloading. A button on the right-hand side of the images will then appear and enable a download of all selected images at high resolution as a single tar-file.

To the search mask  or use the button 'Images'

The archives are subdivided in photo-, document- and drawings-archives.

The  Photo Archive

contains e.g. the collection of slides (1859) which was used especially for lectures and talks. Among others there are photos relating to the sun (453), the moon (418), the planets (161) and the comets (1084).

Others were taken at solar eclipse expeditions (423) or during the construction of the observatory (570). Likewise, there is a collection of digitized photographic films (2814) and the private photo collection taken by Wilhelm Dieckvoß (1920) between 1952 and 1979.

 The Document Archive contains the annual reports of Hamburg Observatory (879) from the years 1883 to 1949.

The Drawings Archive contains technical drawings and blueprints of instruments and buildings (590).

To rummage in the Image Archive