New results with the COSMOS machine

COSMOS is a powerful photographic-plate scanning machine which has been enabling lines of astronomical research to be carried out that would otherwise have been impossible or at least considerably time-consuming and fraught with subjective biases. With COSMOS, large-scale systematic and completely objective investigations from photographic plates are possible, allowing insight to be gained into (amongst other things) the structure of our own Galaxy, the properties and large-scale distribution of galaxies in the Universe, and the properties of quasars in objectively-defined samples. In this paper, the COSMOS system in its present form is described, and some of the more important discoveries that have been made from COSMOS data over the past few years discussed. These discoveries serve to illustrate the usefulness of high-speed, plate-measuring machines as powerful tools in the extraction and analysis of the vast quantity of information contained on astronomical photographs. © 1985.