Our history
CamCEAD is the latest stage in more than forty years of astronomical survey work in Cambridge.
It started with the Automatic Plate Measuring (APM) facility, whose early work on digitising and analysing photographic sky surveys helped shape the way astronomical data is processed today. That work led to the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU), which became known internationally for building and running survey pipelines, data archives and processing systems for many of the world's leading observatories.
CamCEAD carries on from there. We combine decades of experience with astronomical instruments and survey operations with newer tools such as cloud computing, distributed processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence. As astronomical datasets keep growing in size and complexity, we keep developing the data systems researchers need to work with them.
From APM to CASU to CamCEAD
The Automatic Plate Measuring (APM) facility was set up at the Institute of Astronomy in the 1970s. It was one of the first automated systems anywhere that could digitise and measure large numbers of photographic survey plates. Its pattern-recognition methods were well ahead of their time and made possible some of the first large galaxy and star catalogues. Much of what came later was built on that work.
The Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) grew out of the APM group and carried the same approach into the digital era. CASU built the data reduction and archive systems for the Isaac Newton Telescope Wide Field Survey, UKIDSS (the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey), the VISTA surveys and the ground-based preparation for Gaia, among many others.
CamCEAD continues that work, pairing the same long experience of survey operations with cloud, AI and distributed computing to meet the needs of astronomy today.