Some Useful Websites to Obtain Astronomical Images

Some Websites to Obtain Astronomical Images

Compiled by Andrew Fraknoi (Fromm Institute, U. of San Francisco)

[Mar. 2023]

© copyright 2023 by Andrew Fraknoi.  Permission to use for any non-profit educational purpose, such as distribution in a classroom or workshop, is hereby given.  For any other use, or publication, you must contact the author at: fraknoi {at} fhda {dot} edu

1. The Top Image Sites

Many of these images are free of copyright because they are distributed by government agencies. We recommend that you always read a site’s copyright and distribution policies to see where your intended use fits under their guidelines.

Astronomy Picture of the Day: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/aptree.html  Two space scientists scour the internet and feature one interesting astronomy image each day.

AstroPix: https://www.astropix.org/browse A new gallery that combines thousands of images from telescopes in space and a few on the ground. Each image then has con- sistent download options and information about what colors mean which wavelengths

European Southern Observatory Photo Gallery: https://www.eso.org/public/images/  Magnificent color images from ESO’s largest telescopes. See the topical menu at the top.

Hubble Space Telescope Images: https://esahubble.org/images/  Click on the menu of categories or search for the name of any object the telescope may have photographed.

James Webb Space Telescope Images: https://esawebb.org/images/  Growing library of infrared images from JWST; use the menu of categories or search for any object which you may have seen in the news

NOIRLab (formerly the National Optical Astronomy Observatories) Image Gallery: https://noirlab.edu/public/images/  Growing archive of images from the many telescopes that make up the United States’ National Observatories.

Planetary PhotoJournal: https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html  Features thousands of images from NASA’s extensive set of planetary exploration missions with a good search menu. Does not, alas, include most of the missions from other countries.

The World at Night: https://twanight.org/galleries/  Dramatic night-sky images by professional photographers who are amateur astronomers. Note that while many of the astronomy sites allow free use of their images, the ones here are copyrighted by photographers who make their living selling them.

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2. Other Useful General Galleries

Anglo-Australian Observatory: https://images.datacentral.org.au/  Great copyrighted color images by leading astro-photographer David Malin and others.

European Space Agency Gallery: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images  Access images from such missions as Mars Express, Rosetta, and Herschel.

Gemini Observatory Images: https://www.gemini.edu/gallery  Images from a pair of large telescopes in the northern and the southern hemispheres.

Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes Image Gallery: https://www.ing.iac.es//PR/images_index.html  Beautiful images from the Herschel, Newton, and Kapteyn telescopes on La Palma.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory Image Gallery: https://public.nrao.edu/gallery/  Organized by topic, the images show objects and processes that give off radio waves.

Our Infrared World Gallery: https://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/infrared_galleries  Images from a variety of infrared astronomy telescopes and missions.

Wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page  (A world-wide library of copyright-free images; you can search on any topic)

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3. Some Galleries on Specific Subjects (note a number of these are included in AstroPix)

Astronaut Photography of Earth: https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Collections/  

Chandra X-Ray Observatory Images: https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/

NASA Human Spaceflight Galllery: 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore

NASA Images (includes everything NASA does): https://images.nasa.gov/ (click on “Most Popular” in the top menu to see fewer astronaut images, and more astronomy)

NGC and IC Catalog Images: http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc00.htm#ngcic  Courtney Seligman has collected images and information from around the world about each object in these vast catalogs

Robert Gendler: http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/  One of the country’s amateur astro-photographers who comes close to being a professional; often reworks images from various observatories.

Segre Visual Archives at the American Institute of Physics: https://repository.aip.org/islandora/object/nbla:segre  (Not free, but has a rich collection of 30,000 historical photos that include astronomers)

SETI Institute Gallery: https://www.seti.org/galleries  (Galleries of images related to the search for life in the universe)

Solar Dynamics Observatory Gallery: https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/main  Sun images.

Spitzer Infrared Telescope Images: https://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images

Subaru Telescope Images:https://subarutelescope.org/en/gallery/  (A variety of images from the National Astronomical Observatory of