I don't know about CDs and libraries, but the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data is publicly available for download along with the software to work with it - it appears to need *nix - all the commands/utils seem to be Linux or Unix, although there's a reference to Python in OS X as well.
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Originally Posted by http://www.sdss3.org/science/
The SDSS data have been made public in a series of data releases; the most recent is the Tenth Data Release, which includes the complete SDSS/SDSS-II data. It includes links to the flat files in the Science Archive Server and to the catalogs and databases in the Catalog Archive Server.
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The data seems to be
here. But be careful:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by http://www.sdss3.org/dr10/tutorials/gettingstarted.php
First, a disclaimer: the full data volume of the DR10 sample is tens of terabytes (see this table for specifics). rsync (and http) are not designed for such large data transfers. If you really do need the full data set, please contact the Help Desk to talk to a data transfer expert who can arrange a custom transfer. This will be faster for you and easier on our servers.
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There are tutorials (a good place to start)
here and help
here.
HTH