Most organizations would find such imagery dizzying, but for the European Southern Observatory, it's reality. And ESO has it under control.

The organization developed a system to manage data from outer space. Its end-to-end data-flow system is a collection of tools and processes that helps the agency to serve researchers who use its telescopes and archives.

The success of its system has earned ESO recognition from the Computerworld Honors program as well as other observatories, whose officials see ESO as a leader in this field.

"It's something that we all acknowledge as being important," says Todd Boroson, deputy director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz., and associate director for the NOAO Data Products Program.

ESO officials saw a chance to improve the way researchers collect, use and share data when the agency started to build the Very Large Telescope cluster in Chile more than 10 years ago. In 1995, they created the data management and operations division to move the 11-country ESO toward those goals.