Advanced data mining tools for exploring large astronomical databases

The advent of large format CCD detectors and of dedicated survey telescopes is providing the astronomical community with datasets of unprecedented size and quality. These data sets cannot be effectively exploited with traditional interactive tools and require the use of innovative data mining and visualization tools resulting from a synergy between astronomy and information sciences. We discuss here some preliminary results obtained by our group in the fields of automatic clustering in multiparametric space and detection of time transients (both astrometric and photometric).