Astronomy Images on the Web
compiled by John Reid

The Hubble Space Telescope Excellent NASA site. Rich collection of photographs categorized by year and type (Solar system, stars, star clusters, nebulae, supernovae, quasars, black holes, galaxies, deep field). Descriptions provided. Images of the HST itself also available on index on left.

Hubble NewsCenter Browse for images, videos, press releases for several categories (cosmology, exotic, galaxy, miscellaneous, nebula, solar system, star, star cluster, survey). Size of images can be selected, including sizes for printing on letter-sized paper. Many terrific movies (journey into the Eagle nebula, rotating Ceres, Comet Tempel collision, etc.).

Astronomy Picture of the Day New image provided every day. They are often the most current images from spacecraft. New astronomical events are also given attention. Index by date is good, but index by category is not recommended as not all images are available.

SkyNews Magazine Photo of the Week SkyNews (The Canadian Magazine of Astronomy and Stargazing) editors' choice photo of the week. Index of previous photos of the week is available.

NCSA Astronomy Digital Image Library A place for research astronomers to place their images and make them available to the astronomy community and public. As yet, it is all deep sky objects and a few of the photographs appear to be close-up time exposure photographs.

Earth from space: astronaut views of the home planet Features clickable map. The pictures contain descriptions.

EUMETSET (Meteosat) Animations of current weather patterns are available under 'meteosat images'.

Meteosat images Recent images by meteosat.

Earth Impact Database (craters on Earth) Good site, most of Earth's craters presented with images and statistics.

Aurora Gallery - May 2005 8 pages of images from the storm in late May 2005. Keep checking the Space weather site with new images of new storms.

Consolidated Lunar Atlas This site, created by the Lunar and Planetary Institute, allows you to click on an area of the moon and you will receive several close-up images of your desired area. They also have a clickable map which delivers wider and larger views of the moon.

Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon This Lunar and Planetary Institute site is a great site if you are looking for a particular image. You can search by feature name, photo number, or coordinate range. The images were taken at low to moderate sun angles which is good for studying lunar morphology.

Moon Thumbnails Pictures with descriptions. Extensive Apollo photos can be found at NASA's Human Space Flight site.

Planets and Moons Contains descriptions and images of past and present missions (Viking, Voyager, etc).

Cassini-Huygens images (Saturn, Titan & other moons) NASA site with many pages of images of every part of the Saturnian system. Can search images at 'raw images'.

Images of Mars Primarily consists of Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera images from 1997-present. Also features ongoing pictures from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Mars Exploration Rover Mission NASA site with Spirit and Opportunity pictures.

Venus NSSDC Photo Gallery

Images from Galileo (Jupiter) NASA site with extensive collection of images of Jupiter and its satellites. Images grouped by science objective such as Great Red Spot, Aurora, Lightning, etc.

The SOHO Gallery Includes latest images, best of SOHO, and pick of the week.

Big Bear Solar Observatory Daily images of the Sun.

Solar & Lunar Eclipse Pictures Pictures of various solar and lunar eclipses over the last 15 years. Has not been updated recently.

TRACE images Image gallery and movies from TRACE (Transition Region and Coronal Explorer) mission.

Transit of Venus - 2004 NASA site. 14 pages of photographs with details on how each picture was taken.

Comet Observation Home Page NASA site, good for new images, archive is not very complete

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 Collision with Jupiter Images separated by date of impact; pictures taken from many observatories. Descriptions with images.

NASA Comet Shoemaker-Levy Collision with Jupiter Images categorized by impact and by observatories. Descriptions with images.

Earth based optical observatories Comprehensive and insightful list of every ground based observatory, categorized by type (radio, infrared, etc.) Location and size of scope are listed. The site links to the homepages of the observatories.

Orbital telescopes Good list of all the observatories through history. Accompanying images are of the observatories themselves.

Human Space Flight Excellent NASA site. Put cursor over gallery and many human space flight options appear (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Apollo-Soyuz, Skylab, Space Shuttle, Space Station). Extensive archive of images of past missions with descriptions. Video and audio files also available.

Apollo Image Atlas This site, put out by the Lunar and Planetary Institute, is about as extensive as possible. It carries most of the images taken during the missions, and many images are indistinguishable from the next as they are taken right after each other. It is a thorough database if that is what you require, however if you are looking for the most famous pictures of the missions, it is easier to find them on the other two sites listed here.

The Project Apollo Archive Many pictures of the Apollo missions. Descriptions are not as detailed or lengthy as NASA Human Space Flight site.

Constellations

Constellation Photos Images of constellations with and without constellation lines.

The Constellations and their Stars Star chart image, relevant deep-sky object images for each constellation.

The Messier Catalog Go to 'more images of _' on the bottom of each page of an image; good images of the Messiers. Categorized by object type: nebulae, clusters, galaxies.

NGC Images on the Net Extensive database, but often not the best images.

Anglo-Australian Observatory Colourful images of several NGC objects. Copyright labels on pictures.

Planetary Nebulae Observer's Home Page Extensive list of planetary nebulae images.

Globular Cluster Page Images of globular clusters, some are not sharp.

The Hubble Deep Field Survey Not many images, but some memorable ones displayed with descriptions. For Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) see Hubble site under general.

The NAOA Deep Field Wide-field Survey Not many images, but very detailed and colourful ones.

Chandra X-ray Observatory Good colourful images with descriptions.

Images of Radio Galaxies and Quasars Radio images from the NRAO's Very Large Array.

Hubble Space Telescope images of Quasars