Trend toward ever larger data sets in astronomy

Since the work of Annie Jump Cannon and others in creating the Henry Draper Catalog of 20,000 stars, astronomical catalogs have grown steadily in size. The Dark Energy Survey cataloged nearly 1 billion objects, more than 4 times that of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the premier survey of the past decade. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will soon detect billions of objects, dwarfing both surveys.