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CWW House 1

To enhance the ability of its members to age well, and to age "in place."

Websites with Good Astronomical Pictures*

By Ed Jenkins, CWW House 1 Court Astronomer

Our solar system

Solar system objects in general (including planets), as recorded on various NASA missions:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html  (then click on object of interest)

Usually, there are multiple pages of pictures – advance to later ones by clicking “NEXT SET” at the bottom

Pictures from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn (most spectacular!):

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/ (click on “view images” or “view more images”) Note that when you’re on a page showing many images, you can advance through 16 more pages by clicking on “Next” at the bottom of each page.

Another website with some interesting commentary accompanying the pictures:

http://ciclops.org/index.php

Mars rover exploration missions:

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/     click on “Month in review slideshow” and then pick any interval of time that suits you.  What you see is a sequence of pictures and brief narratives about findings, problems, where the rovers went, etc. presented in a very concise storybook fashion.  There are other links on the website that take you to detailed discussions about scientific findings and technical details about the rovers – click on the “Features” link (note that 2006 comes up first, but you can go to previous years by going to the appropriate links).

The Universe (in visible light)

Photos of just about everything recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope:

www.hubblesite.org  and then follow links that you want, e.g., “GALLERY,”  “PICTURE ALBUM,” (type of object), etc.  There are other options, as well.

Alternate site:

http://heritage.stsci.edu/gallery/gallery.html

Infrared Images from the Spitzer Telescope

htp://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/mediaimages/index.shtml

X-ray Images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/category.html

Random Astronomical Pictures

http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/apod/astropix.html

This is a grab bag of astronomical pictures, most of which are taken by amateur astronomers.  This website is known as “Astronomy Picture of the Day,” and as the name implies, a new picture appears every day.   Some pictures are very good, some are mediocre.  If you want to look at pictures that were posted in the past, go to

http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/apod/calendar/allyears.html

and then click on a particular month.

* This web page was created as a resource to accompany the talk by Edward Jenkins to the House 1 meeting on Sunday, January 21, 2007.   It is designed for people who wish to browse through a much broader range of astronomical topics and objects than what I could show in my presentation.  The emphasis here is on websites that show many pictures.