Space photos, sound clips, online
videos available for downloading, animations, online
interactive and virtual reality programs, CDROMs, DVDs,
and videotapes are all available from numerous sources
on the web.
You can use these resources
here to obtain your favorite space photo for your home
page or to build your own multimedia presentation.
NASA
has centralize to some degree the access to its multimedia
resources. Literally hundreds of thousands of photos
of manned space missions reside in the NASA digital
archives and several thousand more are added by every
shuttle and exploratory mission.
Note
that individual NASA mission web sites usually offer galleries
of images, animations, etc. There is no guarantee that
the general NASA search tools will know about all these
images. Many of the ongoing missions, such as the Mars
Surveyor, add new images regularly.
There
are also several huge archives of planetary and astronomical
imagery and also remote
sensing images of earth.
Image
eXchange
Image search tool at NASA that accesses over 300,000 NASA
images:
"The NASA Image eXchange (NIX) is a web-based
search engine for simultaneously searching one or more
of NASA's online image and photo collections. Searching
is performed using keywords (boolean operators can be
employed to refine the search). NIX returns thumbnail
sized images, textual descriptions, image numbers, links
to higher resolution images, links to more information,
and links to the NASA Center that stores each image."
- NIX FAQ
"..include all cataloged Shuttle mission Earth-looking
imagery from the first shuttle mission, STS-1, through
the most recently cataloged shuttle mission, STS-76.
More missions will be made available as they are cataloged.
This collection currently also includes press release
images from the manned space program, from Mercury to
the present. All press release images (c. 10,000 image
files) are currently available." - JSC
archive description.
MiX-
Marshall image eXchange Marshall Spaceflight Center set of galleries for
space history, the Shuttle, space transporation development
projects, the ISS, and others.
Human
Spaceflight Gallery
Lots of images, animations, VR, assembly drawings, etc.
related to the NASA human spaceflight programs including
the Shuttle and Space Station.
"...considered the definitive reference manual
to the global photographic coverage of the Moon. The
images contained within the atlas are excellent for
studying lunar morphology because they were obtained
at low to moderate Sun angles. This digital archive
consists of the complete set of 675 plates contained
in Bowker and Hughes. Images in the archive have been
enhanced to display the best photo quality possible.
For accuracy and usability surface feature information
has been improved and updated, and multiple search
capabilities added to the database."
".. contains digitized photos of many of the unique
research aircraft flown at what is now known as NASA
Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, California.
These images date from the 1940s to the present."
- Dryden Photo website.
Includes many space and rocketry related projects such
as the X-15
and X-38.
Apollo
Photographic Support Data
36,000 photos of the lunar surface taken by the Apollo
astronauts are being scanned for high resolution digital
images.
The
homepages for the individual missions keep galleries
of their own in addition to the central NASA galleries.
Below are links to many of the NASA space science mission
galleries plus other sites that show NASA and other
world space agency images.
JPL
Planetary Photojournal: NASA's Image Access
- The Photojournal provides "...easy access
to the publicly released images from various Solar
System exploration programs." A collaboration
of JPL and USGS (US Geographic Survey.)
Explore
the Solar System!
Erik-Tan Tall provides an interactive Mars map
that allows you to click on a given location
and see photos taken by a rover at that point.
Archives
- An enormous, well organized and accessible
collection of photos, videos, sound clips
and even online movies (Real Player accessible)
from not only the Lunar Prospector mission
but also the Apollo project and other moon
missions
The
Chandra X-ray Observatory Center has posted
lots of images created from the "other"
great observatory (besides Hubble), which
examines the universe in the X-ray rather
than visible light spectrum
The Mars
Global Surveyor and other orbiters have been
imaging Mars now for several years. Many areas have
been imaged more than once and in different seasons
of the Martian year.
A number of controversies have arisen
from analyses of the MGS images. Though the Mars rovers
have proven that there was surface water present at
some point in the past, tremendous arguments will go
on for many decades as to how exactly the many marvelous
features of Mars were formed..
You certainly don't have to accept the
extreme interpretations to find the images fascinating
and to get an appreciation for just how dynamic and
diverse Mars really is. Below are some galleries &
articles about these odd images.
Planet3D
/ Mars3D
Using data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA)
experiment on the Mars
Global Surveyor, the Mars 3D program from Adrian
Lark creates high resolution global maps of the Mars
surface. False color coding reveals details not easily
seen in usual maps. The globe can be rotated via mouse
control.
The program is free and available for download to Windows
machines. It "...renders the whole surface of Mars
using data collected by NASA's MGS satellite. The data
consists of 1.28 Million height points giving a maximum
horizontal spatial resolution of 13Km. The vertical
accuracy is to within 5m."
Other views allow one to use simlar datasets for the
and Venus.
Space.com
- Virtual Space Tour
An "animated encyclopedia" of the solar system,
this tour of the solar system uses Macromedia Flash to
present animations, diagrams and photos. A text version
also available.
SpaceRef
Gallery SpaceRef.com offers this Johnson Space Center
database of NASA manned spaceflight missions.
Space
Magnifient
A very large and well organized collection of space imagery
from both manned spaceflights and unmanned probes as well
astronomical telescope imagery of deep space.
Views
of the Solar System
Calvin Hamilton's spectacularly extensive site providing
a gigantic and well organized of imagery concerning all
aspects of solar system exploration.
Virtual
Space Museum
The VSM provides photos and VR models of various Russian
and Soviet spacecraft.
Windows
to the Universe
Huge and elaborate site at the University of Michigan.
Among many other offerings, it provides extensive image
and multimedia resources on the sun, planets, and deep
space.
More resources
Shopping
- Space Posters/Prints : see the Shopping
section for a list of sites to obtain prints and posters
of NASA and other space images.
SpaceWander
Virtual Space Trip! - "take a virtual space-trip
to the depths of the Universe! All of SpaceWander's
space pictures are real NASA images! Our award-winning
multimedia space tour takes about 12 minutes. You
can sit back and enjoy it or you can press buttons
on the spaceship to see additional in-context information."
Small
World Atlas 2000 - Phil Stookes - Univ. of Western
Ontario - project to use "images of the various
small bodies of the solar system (asteroids and small
to mid-size planetary satellites) and to make maps
from them. "
3-D
Star Maps of Nearby Stars, the Pleiades, Orion, and
the Local Group by Kurt A. Foge This ebook explains
how to "make stellariums, a scale model of the
Solar System" and includes a "brief explanation
about interstellar travel". He says it is a "great
resource for astronomers, schools, and science fiction
writers. ... [and] for science projects."
Astronomy
Picture of the Day Archive
Astronomy Picture of the Day offers stunningly beautiful
pictures submitted from astronomers and other space workers
from around the world.
AstroArts
Gallery A Japanese site (in English) that offers lots of astronomy
related resources including this section with images of
constellations, planets, comets, and more.
Full
Moon
High quality, super sharp Apollo photos:
"NASA has allowed a selection of 1200 of its
master Apollo negatives and transparencies to be taken
offsite for electronic scanning, rendering the sharpest
images of space that we have yet seen."
ApolloSpace
ApolloSpace sells photos made from NASA negatives. Selections
from the whole space of NASA activities from Mercury through
present day.
Mars
Imaging Camera - Japan Japan's ISAS
has launched the Nozomi
probe (previously called Planet-B) to orbit Mars. However,
it needed to use the Moon for a boost to reach Mars. It
used this opportunity to take images of earth and the
Moon with its Mars Imaging camera payload.
Smithsonian
Air&Space Collections
The National Air & Space Museum has extensive collection
of space images, some now available for online paper print
purchase.
OSU
-Space Image Libraries
NASA images for educational use reside at this database
at Oklahoma State University.
