NASHVILLE -- If an asteroid is discovered tonight and found to be on a collision course with Earth, you may have a robot to thank for the warning. If a star blinks for a nanosecond, you won't notice it, but a robot might, and it will deduce that an object no bigger than this city, roaming the solar system in Pluto's realm, has just passed in front of a distant star.

A surprisingly cheap new crop of thinking and seeing machines work alone, scanning the heavens every night, from dusk to dawn with no coffee breaks, looking for objects that humans have so far failed to find.

The robots make judgements about where to point and what to look for. They adjust their routines to the weather. They notice new things and track them. And finally they crank out partially digested data ready for analysis by higher life forms.

More than a dozen teams from around the world, all involved in creating fully autonomous, semi-intelligent observatories, met here last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) to present new findings and swap ideas.

The collective effort is on the verge of producing a flood of new and valuable data.

The creators of robotic astronomy say it will be a boon to amateur stargazers, retiring astronomers and university students, all of whom are thirsty to make discoveries but typically don't have access to observational data from conventional telescopes.

"There's going to be a ton of stuff coming out," said Roger Culver, a Colorado State University professor. Culver smiled broadly when he told SPACE.com that robotic astronomy is his ticket to retirement.

But all that stuff presents a problem. Early showers of ones and zeros have already begun at a handful of pioneering robotic observatories, and some researchers say they were not prepared to handle the data flow. One of the toughest challenges was getting the observations into the hands of capable analysts.

Computer programmers are coming to the rescue.

Due out any day is version 3.0 of RTML, or Remote Telescope Markup Language, a cosmically inclined variant of the HTML computer language that underpins the World Wide Web.

RTML is being tailored to deal with astronomers' syntax. It will be employed to point telescopes, coordinate the efforts of multiple observatories in remote locations, then shuttle the data off to the astronomer who sought it. The results will be formatted for standard web browsers.

RTML will run the MOnitoring NEtwork of Telescopes (MONET), which will consist of an observatory in Texas and another in South Africa. Observing requests will come from dramatically diverse controllers -- three professional research institutions along with high school classrooms worldwide.

Meanwhile, universities and private institutions are cooperating to operate new observatories, share and manage the data, and provide educational opportunities at the college level.

One of these projects, the Robotically Controlled Telescope Consortium (RCT), gives undergraduate and graduate students access to the night sky that most aspiring astronomers only dream of.

"The students just groove on this stuff," Culver said, "the ability to discover an asteroid and possibly name it."

RCT Consortium members refurbished a dormant telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. The 51-inch (1.3-meter) telescope was originally built in the 1960s to test futuristic technologies that might one day control space telescopes.

The facility was shut down because the technology of 1964 wasn't sufficient to operate a telescope as well as humans could.

What required a room-sized computer in the 1960s, "I can now do with a Palm Pilot," said Richard Gelderman, RCT's observatory director. The telescope is now being run remotely with pre-scheduled scripts that can be written during the day. The setup has not yet achieved its goal of full autonomy by way of semi-intelligent software.

NASA is providing partial funding.

A few RCT pictures were released at the AAS meeting, and students and professors are analyzing early data. Soon, however, observations will exceed the analytical capabilities of the consortium, consisting of three universities and the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute.

"Give us a couple of months of full operation and we will be looking for collaborators to come and take some of the data off our hands," Gelderman said in an interview.

Another robotic set of eyes -- three, to be exact -- has already produced important discoveries. The Moving Object and Transient Event Search System (MOTESS) has netted more than 180 new asteroids and a few comets during its two-year prototype effort, Eric Craine, a Western Research Co. scientist, announced.

A handful of the objects are in Earth-crossing orbits and so bear further monitoring to make sure they won't someday hit the planet.

Inexpensive and simple -- roughly $20,000 to build -- the trio of cosmic eyes has no moving parts. "It is simply allowed to scan the sky as Earth rotates," said Craine, who represents the operating group, called the Global Network of Astronomical Telescopes (GNAT). Each of the three telescopes images a given region of the sky at different times. Related software can then easily detect objects (like asteroids) that move in relation to background stars.

Over the next year or so, GNAT aims to deploy six more of these 3-telescope setups around the globe, with an ultimate goal of 48 worldwide locations.

The GNAT project needs analysts now, Craine said. Some 60,000 potential variable stars have been identified and require follow-up observation.

And the data flow is expected to triple next spring. The project will soon generate a half-million images a year. In addition to space rocks, estimates suggest the observatory could find 45 new supernovae each year.

The construction and operating costs of the global network: less than that of a single, 39-inch (1-meter) telescope operated in normal fashion, Craine said.

Another project could be said to eclipse all others in creativity.

Astronomers have found about 400 comet-like objects near and beyond Pluto's orbit, in a region of the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt. But they can't see small objects that far away, and there are likely millions or billions of them to be found.

"We're going to have to do something sneaky," said Stuart Marshall of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His goal is to find Kuiper Belt Objects down to 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) in diameter.

Marshall and his colleagues are building an automated telescope in Taiwan that will monitor several thousand stars, making several images every second. If a Kuiper Belt Object passes in front of a star, the effect will be just like an eclipse, as when the Moon blocks the Sun's light. Astronomers call this sort of stellar eclipse an occultation.

The Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey (TAOS) telescope, set to start observing next year, will gather 80 to 100 gigabytes of data every night. Its brains are managed by open-source Linux software.

Marshall expects to find 10 or more small Kuiper Belt Objects every year.

Loads of data might sound like an astronomer's dream. But until analyzed, the robotic observations are worthless.

"These are exciting things," said Jay Pasachoff, a Williams College astronomer known for his involvement in education. "The trick is to find ways to analyze [the data]."

Pasachoff, not directly involved in the robotic projects, notes that while there are many interested students, they have to be trained by experienced astronomers before they can know what to look for.

"It's not just a matter of throwing that data up," Pasachoff said in an interview. "You need support and coordination."

One model to consider, he said, is the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). This non-profit organization, set up in 1911, connects scientists, educators, students and amateur astronomers around the world. The organization coordinates some 300,000 observations a year and works to publish results on behalf of its members.

The message delivered by Pasachoff and others: No matter how sophisticated robots get, there will still be a role for humans in exploring the night sky.