NASA Opens Space Image Library 105
slatterz writes with an excerpt from a brief PC Authority article:
"NASA is to make its huge collection of historic photographs, film and video available to the public for the first time. A partnership with the non-profit Internet Archive will see 21 major NASA imagery collections merged into a single searchable online resource. The NASA Images website is expected to go live this week. The content of the site covers all the diverse activities of America's space program, including imagery from the Apollo missions, Hubble Space Telescope views of the universe and experimental aircraft past and present."
The site is working already, and it looks fantastic. Don't hesitate to share any interesting pictures or movies you find.
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Discounting the racist tones of your message, if any population's youth is really determined to kill itself, the government should step out of its way and let nature do its job.
If those kids kill themselves before reproducing, any genetic tendency to aggression they had won't be passed to future generations. Unfortunately, it's expected that overly aggressive populations with high mortality rates in young ages will, given enough time, develop suitable mating behaviour that allows them to reproduce sooner.
Ev
hopefully they'll start from the beginning (Score:5, Interesting)
This is great, my only hope is that they start with the older stuff first.
I've got some old 8x10's my father would bring home - he was an engineer at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center from the beginning of the space race through to the Jupiter probe.
Now I have these wonderful images I can share with my young daughter of what an old computer looks like and the slide-ruled people who ran them.
I know I'm gushing, but this is going to be great in so many ways, as along with some spectacular shots of space - we'll also see down-to-earth images of the culture at the time that cannot be expressed even in 1000 words.
Re:hopefully they'll start from the beginning (Score:4, Funny)
we'll also see down-to-earth images of the culture at the time that cannot be expressed even in 1000 words.
Obviously [mac.com]
Re:hopefully they'll start from the beginning (Score:5, Funny)
The flag in that photo looks like it was Photoshopped.
Re:hopefully they'll start from the beginning (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope that they can find the missing tapes. :)
I am not only a NASA brat, but also worked at GSFC circa 1976-1976 for Bendix as a sub contractor at the NTTF facility there.
Neat stuff happening then, and now.
Hopefully your daughter can experience the 'cool, awesome, and wow' factor we went through...that job sparked my interest in astrophysics even though at the time I was working in Logistics fresh out of my high school.
Long before I was old enough to think beyond 'Wow-cool- ASTRONAUTS!!-I loved 'playing' in the Mercury and Gemini capsules when I went to work with Dad before I was old enough to be hired there. (circa 7th grade I think)
Dude! Talk to your Dad with your Daughter present. That was a great time for the Space Race!
Don't quash her spirit or ambitions....feed them instead!
I would not be surprised if my Dad had not known your Dad.
Rock on dude!...don't deny your daughter, but encourage her.
P.S.
This post hit me out of the blue so to speak...and I have been drinking,...But give your daughter all of the facts and guide her in her discoveries and provide her with the facts.
Astrophysics is an interesting and growing field now days. Help her out in the right direction! (my humble opinion-end lecture)
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You sound like one of those carefully planted shills sent out by NASA to convince people that the moon landings were real. Great straw man :)
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My father worked as a photographer for a NASA (& DOD) contractor and had access to a rather large set of high resolution photos that came from space as well. One of them was a high resolution image of the whole Earth taken at the Equator that shows nearly the entire western hemisphere. I think it was likely a weather satellite photo, but the resolution is simply outstanding as it is an actual photograph.
This photo, BTW, is now above my son's bed and has become a family heirloom.
My only regret was that
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hopefully they'll start from the beginning
I'm still waiting for the picture of the Big Bang. Until they show that, I'll believe the theory is a hoax.
Amazing picture (Score:1, Funny)
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I found this...
"Irregular Moons Discovered Around Uranus" [nasaimages.org]
'nough said...
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I only see a black screen with some links to the side.
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That's the point. I shouldn't have to. It's lame if I can't view a site because of poor design philosophies or principles. Some people decide to have navigation JavaScript oriented to impress their boss or to look keen or to introduce exploits. Their is no need or excuse to have poor Web design.
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BTW: NO, I will not enable javascript. Fuck them. Like some Web sites insist that you can only view their content with Internet explorer, and some sites (a vast minority) insist that you can only view their sites with Firefox, I build my sites to test if Javascript is enabled, and if it is enabled then I give instructions on how to dis-enabled it so that they can view the content on my site.
Best regards,
UTW
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Quick note:
I just visited a Web site (linked by a Slashdot member no less) saying that:
"It looks like you need to upgrade your browsers Flash Player."
It's a presumptuous and arrogant statement on behalf of the Web designers. Web designers can choose to make their Web sites multimedia friendly without the Bullshit. The ones who decide not to I have no sympathy with.
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I know I'm going to hate myself for asking, but where's Uranus?
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Um, I meant in the picture. All I saw were a bunch of tiny dots. And surely, I expected a more snappy answer to a stupid question. You're no fun.
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I remember reading somewhere (probably before the [populous] Internet revolution, I'm thinking early or pre-1990's) that astronomers changed the official pronunciation of "Uranus" to make the "a" in "Uranus" short or unstressed. This was done for obvious reasons.
From Wikipedia:
The preferred pronunciation of the name Uranus among astronomers is [jrns], with the first syllable stressed and a short a (rns);[34] this is more classically correct than the alternate [je.ns], with stress on the second syllable and a "long a" (rns), which is often used in the English-speaking world.
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Off hand (in the vague recesses of my memory) I believe Steven Hawking mentioned that in the Brief History of Time. Maybe not, but Google isn't helping me here and I don't want to download (search for) a PDF version (to do a word search) just to validate my assumptions.
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On the flip side of your venis.
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Best answer so far. Thank you. It's just that I couldn't find it in the picture. Maybe that's a good thing.
She's got it
Yeah, baby, she's got it
I'm your Venus, I'm your fire
At your desire
Rover tracks (Score:5, Interesting)
How anyone can look at this image in particular and claim the landings were faked is beyond me. It's a wonderful image, let's just hope we'll be back there soon to take more!
Re:Rover tracks (Score:5, Funny)
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It was a soundstage on mars!
I'm more of a 202 or 307 kinda guy :)
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I bet you could tell by the pixels.
BTW, I resent image retouching being referred to as "photoshopping". I've done some really cool retouching with Paint Shop Pro (version 9 before Corel acquired it and totally ruined it).
Of course, it could be worse... it could be called "Gimping"...
Re:Rover tracks (Score:5, Informative)
I really like this image [nasaimages.org] showing the rover tracks leading back to the Apollo 14 Lunar Module "Antares".
Apollo 14 didn't have a rover. Those tracks would have been made by the MET (Modular Equipment Transporter).
The LRV was first flown on Apollo 15 and IMHO was about 1000 times more effective than working without a rover.
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Obviously this news is fake. I mean, they can't possibly think that goatse is not historic, right?
Taking bets on accidental UFO exposure... (Score:2)
Ok, I'm taking bets on how many days before NASA slips up some contraversial picture that raises questions about UFOs. You know, like some of these interesting NASA pics [ufocasebook.com].
Hmmm, I wonder if volunteering photos will make, hacking NASA [blogspot.com] a little less likely going forward.
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Hmmm, I wonder if volunteering photos will make, hacking NASA [blogspot.com] a little less likely going forward.
SK: Do you have a copy of this? It came down to your machine.
GM: No, the gr aphical remote viewer works frame by frame. It's a Java application, so there's nothing to save on your hard drive, or at least if it is, only one frame at a time.
SK: So did you get the one frame?
GM: No.
SK: What happened?
GM: Once I was cut off, my picture just disappeared.
SK: You were actually cut off the time you were downloading the picture?
GM: Yes, I saw the guy's hand move across.
He can write a Perl Script and he hasn't heard of printscreen? Or, ya know, a digital camera? Video out?
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You know, like some of these interesting NASA pics
Do you have to be wearing the sunglasses from They Live in order to see the UFOs in those pictures? In a few of them (maybe 1/4 or less of the images) there are bright spots whose source isn't immediately obvious. In the others, I was left scratching my head. I could only assume that in many of them, the site's owner was trying to say that the sun/Earth in the sky or one of the background hills was a UFO.
These images aren't correct... (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you NASA (Score:4, Insightful)
Poor image quality on more recent images (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Poor image quality on more recent images (Score:5, Informative)
The old images were taken on real photographic film, which was then brought back to Earth and developed. Hugely expensive due to having to ship all that mass around, and only feasible at all on sample-return missions, but the quality is superb. The new images are taken using digital cameras, JPEG compressed, and transmitted back using the Deep Space Network; as a result, the quality is much lower. (On the other hand, shipping photographic film back from Mars is a little beyond our technical expertise right now.)
It is possible to take high-resolution pictures from Mars, but it's not done very often because it takes too long --- a couple of weeks for a decent panorama; dozens of low-resolution pictures need to be taken, transmitted back, and then pieced together (mostly by hand). It's far more cost-effective to use low-resolution pictures. At that distance bandwidth is the main limitation; they've just been upgraded to a 256kbps connection, and the DSN only listens to them in short windows.
This is less of a problem for spacecraft nearer Earth; JAXA's Kaguya lunar probe can send back HDTV video, for example, although still not live.
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This is a baseless
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It is not monetary value it's scientific value. Generally the scientist who is has the rights to the telescope time (or who has helped design or run the mission, etc.) has rights to the data for a limited time (I think it's 6 months). After that time the images are released for the (scientific) general public. The difference here is that it's put into a form that the really general public can access the materials.
No reason for paranoia in this case that I'm aware of.
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Resolution (Score:1, Insightful)
I did not RTFA but will they upload those awesome images in higher resolution? It would be the best wallpaper site on the web...
Dammit captchas.
WOW! (Score:1)
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Mine's not. You all have slashdotted the site, you insensitive clods. Now I have to go back to work.
Remember (Score:4, Insightful)
In spite of all the criticism, much of it deserved, something like this reminds us that NASA has had its share of triumphs. I hope they start to find their way again.
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This fascination for their past (Apollo) is not a good sign. They are so stuck in their old ways that at some point it might be best to turn NASA into a museum and build a new space agency.
If you want some light reading, try the paper available here [space-frontier.org]. It offers some illustrations of the inertia of the agency and of the damages it causes.
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Thank you very much for the link. It's now living in the "Revisit" folder in my Bookmarks.
Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
HiRise [arizona.edu] is pretty cool too.
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Well, the problem is that 90% of the photos are crap. And by that, I mean, overexposed, not centered in the shot, cut of or what have you. I've heard that National Geographic photographers consider it a good day when one out of 100 photos they've taken is good enough for NG.
Also, from a far more cynical point of view, do you really think NASA is going to give out the crappy out of focus pictures, or the crystal clear ones that inspire people to give them more money?
Remember, NASA has a budget of something l
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In defense of NASA, a great many of those photos have been released... at least for current space probes. A great deal of what you are complaining about here has to do with the distribution of those images and not necessarily a secret conspiracy by NASA to withhold these images from the public.
All it takes is a little more digging to find those images you want.
What is frustrating is for photographs that weren't originally digital imagery, where often a rather lousy job of digitizing the media took place th
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If the data was preserved properly AND somebody bothered to write a good conversion utility that didn't lose too much information in the process, you might have some good photographs.
It would be nice if NASA were willing to give the public a shot at the raw data for the files in formats that they don't have decoders for.
I've reverse-engineered proprietary image formats before for fun. I'm sure there aren't many people who do that, but I know I'm not the only one.
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I've done some reverse-engineering of multi-media data formats (including some very obscure formats), and it can be quite frustrating.
I wouldn't mind a poorly scanned data format document put into a PDF that you could plow thorugh and then have access to some of the raw data files as well. I've seen some spectacular results for some enhanced processing of the Venera missions to Venus, where about 10%-20% of some of the images that were presumed to be corrupted data revealed some usable data. That is the k
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Excuse me, why is the above twaddle modded up to a +3? This person obviously has not spent the better half of a single second actually looking for the images they decry as being "unreleased". Because if they had, they would've found even the most casual perusal of the websites for any of the recent space probe missions turns up TENS OF THOUSANDS OF RAWIMAGES for each one. Your incompetence in locating EASILY accessible information from NASA websites isn't their fault.
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This actually is the best web gallery I've seen so far, can anyone suggest an opensource work-/lookalike web gallery software?
Bummer (Score:5, Funny)
No pics of the studio where they filmed the moon landing :(
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Lost in Space (Score:2)
Hey cool! I've always wanted to find the background image of the end titles for the original Lost in Space series (colour version).
I wonder if it's not too old. I believe it was taken around 1959?
Great - An Image Of Freshly-Crapped Pants (Score:1)
http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNAS~5~5~20520~125573:Apollo-17-Astronaut-Training [nasaimages.org]
Guy standing in the white Boeing suit, near right center edge of frame. Thanks heaps, NASA.
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Yes, but... (Score:2)
This would make the best t-shirt ever (Score:1)
You are here [nasaimages.org]
With the exception of the spacecraft we sent out, and RF from our radio and TV, everything about us is on that tiny little grain of sand
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Sorry about this, but I gotta add that this should remind us how insignificant we are, and that we are living out our lives like those kids in "Lord of the Flies"
Will these go into Google Sky? (Score:2)
Annual NASA Greatest Hits Commemoration (Score:2)
I've been advocating for publishing those archives for many years, since about 1991 when I met a NASA archivist at a Unix conference in San Jose, CA. I'm very pleased to see these archives opened for public use.
What I wanted since 1991 was to see NASA actually mail through the USPS a CD-ROM (later a DVD) once a year to every American household (minus those who mailed them back, postage free, opting out). A "greatest hits of 2008" etc, that would be collectible, useful for school assignments, and just a beau
Apollo 11 and 17 Landing Videos (Score:4, Interesting)
Two of my very favorite things to watch, and I could literally sit and watch them over and over for weeks are the Apollo 11 and 17 landing videos.
NASA has placed online full video libraries for both Apollo 11 [nasa.gov] and Apollo 17 [nasa.gov]. *
The actual Apollo 11 landing is here [nasa.gov] (16 minutes).
The actual Apollo 17 landing is here [nasa.gov] (4 minutes).
The Apollo 17 video will send shivers up and down your spine I guarantee it.
* Most unfortunately, the videos are in Quicktime(tm) format. If you, like me, use Windows, go here [apple.com] to get Quicktime. If you have NoScript, disable it for that page because there is a script that autodetects your OS. Download the most basic player and uncheck all options because Apple tries to install all sorts of incredibly annoying nag- and crap-ware. Also make sure you do not select auto-update because thats another level of nagging to upgrade to a paid service. Finally, use Spybot to disable the Apple updater in your startup list.
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If you, like me, use Windows, go here to get Quicktime.
Quicktime is horrible. I recommend QuickTime Alternative using the superb Media Player Classic. Just goes to show that Microsoft and Apple haven't done one good thing to media player UI in the last 10 years.
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http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ [videolan.org]
I tried it out and it works well for me so I got rid of Quicktime.
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I never used VLC on Windows but it's my player of choice for Linux.
Good for them, recommending something that works. The players from the big boys are all horrible. They have no interest in supporting each other's formats, and none of them work very well and they all look horrible. It's gotten almost as bad as it was before ActiveMovie came along.
The people behind VLC and MPC understand people just want to watch the damn videos. They don't need some stupid "environment" forcing advertising or links to i
While I appreciate that they are saving the past (Score:2)
First time? Really? (Score:2)
Audio Archive? (Score:1)
Is there a NASA audio archive available anywhere? I've been looking around, but have only found a few sites with a small number of audio clips. Having an Apollo moonwalk on my ipod would be sweet.
It's Overloaded Already (Slashdot effect) (Score:1)
Compression (Score:2)
I was able to get to look at a picture from a direct link someone posted even though the site was going very slow and downloaded a neat picture. For some reason, the jpeg file was in a .zip, so the "compressed" file was actually a bit larger (about 4 KB) than the actual picture, making the extra compression kind of pointless. Maybe that's why they're getting slashdotted so badly!
if only it was new content (Score:2)
It's another packaging of the 160x120 videos they already have online. Now if they threw in the word "cloud" and some community sections, they'd have something.
Did they get an NOAA license for this? (Score:1)
nice pic (Score:1)