1.9 Million New Space Images Available For Free

BigTed writes: "This story found at bottomquark says 1.9 million images from the most thorough space survey ever made - The Two-Micron All Sky Survey - have been released by astronomers. Sponsored by NASA and the National Science Foundation, they have been made publicly available. This site over at NASA has more information and links to all those pictures."

This is all great.

[Kickasso]

Those are infraread images, for those of you who actually care. However, I must make an observation. A sciense article with no comments after what, an hour? And this is supposed to be the News for Nerds site? Gimme a fucking break.
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Re:This is all great.

[chowda]

Maybe if it was on the front page.. I just happened to do a search for something and saw this article on the search page..

Re:This is all great.

[Sloppy]

Well, it's just that everybody went looking through it expecting "pictures of stars" to have lots of pictures of Natalie Portman, Sarah Michelle Geller, etc. They're still confused and distracted by the astronomy pictures. But don't worry, they'll eventually wander back.

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Re:This is all great.

[jellicle]

A lot of people have trouble learning/finding/understanding that there are sections other than the front page where stories which are interesting but which don't seem "good" or "meaty" enough to make the front page are placed. Part of it is a user interface issue. Part of it is cluelessness. Let's guess which one applies to "Kickasso".
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Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org

Re:This is all great.

[Kip]

Get a Slashdot account and set up some Slashboxes. I have boxes for all the sections checked and thus I see when new articles show up.

Now set up the Terraserver-style Edition

[Cerlyn]

I hate to say it, but something like Microsoft's Terraserver [microsoft.com] would be real nice here. Given my current coordinates on Earth, the day I want to go star searching, the area of the sky I will look at, etc., and let me see what I will look at through my telescope. There is an interface [caltech.edu] that provides the ability to search in a fashion somewhat like this, but I still seem to know more that I do to use it.

Re:Now set up the Terraserver-style Edition

[chgreer]

Why not just use xephem [clearskyinstitute.com]? It will do the exact same thing as you describe Terraserver does, and will show up data in optical, where this is in infrared. Unless you have a *really* nice backyard setup or whatnot, you're not going to see too much useful in these pictures. Ie) you won't see what you see in the pictures.

Better yet, just learn your Dec and RA, and you can just do it yourself. Zenith dec at your home is just your latitude and RA is the sidreal time of your area.

Setup a planetarium with the data

[ndege]

I think it would be cool to have an omni-max type view that people could take tours with.

To be able to get some serious zoom from anywhere at any time. To be able to get a real lesson in astronomy. I am fascinate by the stars. I have spent many hours watching, thinking, pondering life under a sky filled with bright stars. The problem is that I have never taken a class on astronomy or have any friends that are into it. I would love to have a resource that I could go and spend a few dollars and a couple of hours and get a crash-course in astronomy and use the "teachers" use the data collected from this research to be able to make the learning interesting and keep my attention. Not that I am looking specifically for entertainment, but I find that when I exercise my brain, I get much more than if I rent the latest movie and veg. out.

Yes, I am one of those countless people who find Nova, PBS, and TLC interesting. I even record such programs. They wet my tastebuds for more knowledge and wisdom.

(Don't get me wrong...sometimes I do get overloaded and must veg. out in front of some Hollywood production.) :)

just my mere $0.02....
-John
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http://terraserver.microsoft.com/default.asp

[TwistedGreen]

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