Picture This! - Online Imagery for Amateurs

"Take nothing but pictures.  Leave nothing but footprints.  Kill nothing but time."
   Motto of the Baltimore Grotto

Astronomy is unique because it is the only science in which amateurs can make contributions to our understanding of the natural world. Stuart J. Goldman, in his Astronomy Online column in the November 2008 Sky and Telescope magazine, describes online sources of astronomical imagery that were intended for professional use but are now being used by amateur astronomers too. He challenges amateurs to explore the online data and use it make new discoveries. 

Bill Dunford of Riding with Robots discusses the opportunities for armchair astronauts to ride along with the various operating space probes in this podcast from 365 Days of Astronomy, the daily podcast of the International Year of Astronomy,   Also, Doug Ellison of Unmannedspaceflight.com explains how amateur astronomers are helping the professionals by processing and publishing images from the Mars rovers and other space probes in another podcast from 365 Days of Astronomy.

Images are available from the following websites:

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory website provides a portal to solar data and images from the spacecraft.

The High-Resolution and Imaging Experiment at the University of Arizona provides images taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The Thermal Emission Imaging System also at UofA, provides high-resolution images from the Mars Odyssey.

Mars rover raw images are available from NASA's Spirit and Opportunity sites.

The Hubble Legacy Archive contains images taken by the instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope. A tutorial on the site explains how to search for images.

The Multimission Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, MAST, is an archive of images in the optical, ultraviolet and near-infrared parts of the spectrum. A mission listing, tutorial and manual are available.  I have not had the opportunity to check out the archive, but there appear to be enough data to keep one busy for years.

Images are available in many formats including JPG and FITS, the astronomy standard. SAOImage DS9 will display FITS files.  To use FITS images, one needs software capable of manipulating the file format such as the Linux based IRAF or a free plug-in for Adobe Photoshop called FITS Liberator. A tutorial on the Liberator site explains how to use it to process images taken with filter sets into your own color images of celestial objects.  Now a CCD camera and dark skies are not needed to do astrophotography.  Anyone can do it in the comfort of their living room.

If manipulating FITS files is too intimidating, processed images of celestial objects plus other astronautical images and movies are available on these websites:

Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)  "Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer." or browse the APOD archive.

JPL Gallery is an iTunes-style gallery of the best photographs taken by Jet Propulsion Lab's spacecraft or pick your mission for more images.

GRIN - Great Images in NASA is the best of NASA's images.

NASA Images is the central portal to all NASA images from the 1958 Explorer project to the present day. Categories include universe, solar system, Earth, aeronautics and astronauts.

NIX - NASA Image Exchange is a search engine that pulls images from across NASA's various websites.

Hubble Heritage Project contains the spectacular Hubble images that have become cultural icons plus art and poetry related to the HST.

Solar-System Imagery Archive at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory contains not only images but links to homepages for Cassini-Huygens, Dawn, Epoxi, Spirit, Opportunity, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, Rosetta Orbiter, Phoenix Mars Lander, Stardust-NeXT, Voyager 1 and 2 and Ulysses probes.

Apollo Image Archive will eventually be an online archive of all Apollo images of the lunar surface. As of November 2008, the collection has 1852 images from the Apollo 15 and 16 missions.

Copernica is a NASA portal underdevelopment that will dispaly art work commissioned by NASA.

Lunar and Planetary Institute offers the Apollo Image Atlas among it many online resources.

ESA Multimedia Portal contains the best images, video, animations, screensavers and wallpaper from the European Space Agency.

India Space Research Institute website has links to images from the November 2008 Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency provides a searchable photo archive of launch vehicles, spacecraft, observation images and space research. 

Listen to this Astronomy Cast podcast for more ways for amateurs to contribute.