Data-Rich Astronomy

In the last decade a new generation of telescopes and sensors has allowed the production of a very large amount of data and astronomy has become a data-rich science; this transition is often labeled as: data revolution and data tsunami. The first locution puts emphasis on the expectations of the astronomers while the second stresses instead the dramatic problem arising from this large amount of data: which is no longer computable with traditional approaches to data storage data reduction and data analysis. In a new age new instruments are necessary as it happened in the Bronze age when mankind left the old instruments made out of stone to adopt the new better ones made with bronze. Everything changed even the social structure. In a similar way this new age of Astronomy calls for a new generation of tools and for a new methodological approach to many problems and for the acquisition of new skills. The attempts to find a solution to this problems falls under the umbrella of a new discipline which originated by the intersection of astronomy statistics and computer science: Astroinformatics (Borne 2009; Djorgovski et al. 2006).