I once had the privilege of spending a day with Jim Gray, when he visited the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico.<p>At the time, he was interested in collecting as much astronomical data as possible, to create a unified model of the sky.<p>He viewed it as a logical next step, after creating one of the first unified databases of Earth imagery (Microsoft Terraserver). "I love astronomers," he would sau, "They want to give the data away."<p>If one can judge a person after a matter of a few hours, then I submit that all of the wonderful things to be said about Jim Gray are true.<p>.<p>One story about Terraserver:
<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/8q89q4/microsofts-terraserver-was-google-earth-before-there-was-google-earth" rel="nofollow">https://www.vice.com/en/article/8q89q4/microsofts-terraserve...</a><p>S.G. Djorgovski1,2 and R. Williams,
"Virtual Observatory: From Concept to Implementation", 2005 - PDF:
<a href="https://authors.library.caltech.edu/28224/1/114.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://authors.library.caltech.edu/28224/1/114.pdf</a><p>WorldWide Telescope:
<a href="https://www.worldwidetelescope.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.worldwidetelescope.org/</a>