This is semi-old news, and I’ve been meaning to mention it, so here ya go: NASA has put up a vast archive of space images on a site they named, for some reason, NASA images.
They have a ton of very cool images there, I must say. When they load, they are fitted to your screen, but then you can zoom in or out, which is fun. There are descriptions on the sidebar (generally tapped from the press releases, looks like) and there are animations as well. There are some nifty gizmos, like an "Embed This" link with pretty clear instructions on how to embed a given picture into a blog or web page –I embedded an illustration of the New Horizons spacecraft by my friend Dan Durda above — and of course there is the ubiquitous "Share This" link, too.
All in all, well done! It’s nice to see some folks at NASA figuring out this whole intertoob thing and doing a nice job of it. Kudos!
August 24th, 2008 at 11:09 am
This is really confusing… why would they name it NASA images?
August 24th, 2008 at 11:27 am
I linked in a few weeks back and have been lost in there, rummaging around, ever since. Loads of great stuff. One thing, they left the “d” outa the name Nasa I-madge-s. you think I could sue?
August 24th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Ya’Know, if you tilt your head to the right, the New Horizons craft looks a lot like a Storm Troopers helmet. Lucas would be proud,,,and hey, now we have evidence of ET,,,
Gary 7
August 24th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Michael L:
Probably because of one-upmanship with ESA Multimedia Gallery
August 24th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Do they have any pix of the moon bases? What about the Mars complex next to the face?
August 24th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
FYI, there’s not even a hint of an embedded image in the RSS feed of this post. If you hadn’t said there was an image, I never would have known to click through to look for one.
Consequently, I’m hoping that in the future you don’t embed many images from NASA Images. :-/
August 24th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Awesome! One of the best things about when NASA releases images is that all of those images can be used freely without copyright concerns, because products of the federal government aren’t eligible for copyright. So if you ever need space images, just head over to NASA and grab some
August 24th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Ran by archive.org and not sure its affiliated with Nasa other than an act that was passed probably granting permission to host/reproduce content (or manage such services). Its funded by the Kahle-Austin foundation and seeking further support.
August 25th, 2008 at 2:08 am
No live chat today.
But at least the images are cool.
August 25th, 2008 at 3:24 am
@ Sour Blaze
I am having live chat withdrawel symptoms too. I hope El Presidente has not forgotten his loyal subjects
August 25th, 2008 at 6:06 am
Whoa, that is one large archive, going to take quite a while to move through all of those.
As for New Horizons, can’t wait until 2015. Oh right, the world is suppose to end in 2012 or something, isn’t it?
August 25th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Well, there goes my day. All the pretty pictures to look at.
August 31st, 2008 at 10:20 pm
[...] Beautiful Science, Communicating Science, Science Education | Tags: astronomy, resources | Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy just spread the word about a sort-of-new NASA site with beautiful zoomable images from [...]
September 8th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
[...] Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has a good article with a link to the NASA website with image archives. There are a LOT OF PROBES currently out and [...]