Space Telescope Science Institute Manages 4TB Guide Star Catalog Database Built on Objectivity/DB; Federated Object Database Delivers Scalability for Photographic Sky Survey.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 16, 2003

Objectivity, Inc., the leader in high performance database engines that manage complex data, real-time applications and very large volumes of data, today announced that the Catalogs and Surveys Branch of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has been using Objectivity/DB for its four terabyte Guide Star Catalog (GSC).

This is a catalog that captures positions, magnitudes, and proper motions for approximately 2 billion objects, mostly stars and galaxies, which span the entire sky photographically surveyed from ground.

STScI has been digitizing the photographic Sky survey plates from the Palomar and UK Schmidt telescopes to produce the GSC and Digital Sky Survey (DSS). These source and image catalogs support ground and space-based telescope operations and provide a valuable scientific resource to the astronomical community.

The Guide Star Catalog II is an all-sky catalog based on 1" resolution scans of the photographic Sky Survey plates, at two epochs and three bandpasses, from the Palomar and UK Schmidt telescopes. The all-sky, magnitude-limited Telescope Operations version, GSC2.2, contains positions, classifications, and magnitudes for 435,457,355 objects, and is now available to the community via the WWW. The transition from the GSC I catalog containing only 19 million stars to GSC2.3 containing approximately 1 billion for the control and target acquisition of the Hubble Space Telescope is underway. Public release of this new 2.3 catalog version is planned for early '04 following the completion of quality assurance testing.

In order to store this data in small accessible units that are logically structured on the sky, the GSC II database is partitioned into 32,768 regions (each an individual database in an Objectivity federation). Every region contains approximately 50,000 objects, each representing an observed star or galaxy in the sky. The final database size occupies approximately four terabytes. The data, which consists of plate source measurements and their calibrations, is directly traceable to the original photographic images and the reference systems on which the calibrations are based.

"The Guide Star Catalog application is a perfect application for Objectivity's unique federated architecture," states Jay Jarrell, president and CEO for Objectivity. "Objectivity/DB provides a Single Logical View by storing objects within databases in a Federated Database. Single Federated Databases can scale into the Exabyte (1 million Terabytes) range. Applications can also view multiple federations simultaneously."

About Space Telescope Science Institute

The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under contract to NASA, and is located in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. The Web site of STScI may be consulted for information about the HST, its science program, the education and public outreach programs associated with HST, and the GSC project. The URL is http://www.stsci.edu.

About Objectivity, Inc.

Objectivity, Inc. is the leading provider of high performance, scalable object databases with unrivaled support for mixed-language development and distributed, mixed-hardware environments. Objectivity boosts developer productivity, shortens time to market, and provides the ideal platform for mission-critical applications requiring continuous performance and adaptability to future technologies.

Objectivity, Inc. is headquartered in Mountain View, California, USA. For more information, contact Objectivity by e-mail at [e-mail], on the World Wide Web at http://www.objectivity.com or by calling 650-254-7100.

Note to editors: Objectivity and Objectivity/DB are trademarks of Objectivity, Inc. All other company or product names mentioned herein remain the property of their respective owners.