Roboticists looking for real-world jobs might consider working on large telescopes. The computer-controlled mechanisms, mirrors, and instruments present many of the same challenges as robotics. [Dan Wilcox (wilcox@cfht.hawaii.edu), comp.robotics, 8/16/93.]

The National Information Infrastructure Testbed consortium has linked researchers at Oregon State and UNew Hampshire with real-time satellite and environmental data from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA. [Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/22/93. EDUPAGE.] (Floods of real-time data may soon generate a market for intelligent scheduling, control, visualization, analysis, modeling, simulation, training, and advisory software.)

Coincidence? "Some astronomers have a gift for making lovely, sharp photographs of galaxies with large telescopes. Hubble was not one of them, though he was adept at extracting essential data from the generally flawed plates he did obtain." -- Timothy Ferris, 1988. [Richard Chang (chang@cs.umbc.edu), 8/25/93. Tim Finin.]