Group items tagged

In the wake of Shepard Fairey's debacle with the AP over the rights to the image he used as reference/inspiration for his wildy popular Obama poster, I wanted to share a list of Public Domain Licensed images, in this case, astronomy. Fairey's situation should hit home with all pixel junkies out there and remind us that we have to pay close attention to the licenses associated with the images we use in our design work. I've compiled a list of beautiful, inspiring astronomy images that all have a Public Domain License.

Halo and Galaxy Formation Histories from the Millennium Simulation Public release of a VO-oriented and SQL-queryable database for studying the evolution of galaxies in the ΛCDM cosmogony

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is one of the most ambitious and influential surveys in the history of astronomy. Over eight years of operations (SDSS-I, 2000-2005; SDSS-II, 2005-2008), it obtained deep, multi-color images covering more than a quarter of the sky and created 3-dimensional maps containing more than 930,000 galaxies and more than 120,000 quasars. SDSS data have been released to the scientific community and the general public in annual increments, with the final public data release from SDSS-II scheduled for October 31, 2008. SDSS-III, a program of four new surveys using SDSS facilities, began observations in July 2008, and will continue through 2014.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is one of the most ambitious and influential surveys in the history of astronomy. Over eight years of operations (SDSS-I, 2000-2005; SDSS-II, 2005-2008), it obtained deep, multi-color images covering more than a quarter of the sky and created 3-dimensional maps containing more than 930,000 galaxies and more than 120,000 quasars. SDSS data have been released to the scientific community and the general public in annual increments, with the final public data release from SDSS-II scheduled for October 31, 2008. SDSS-III, a program of four new surveys using SDSS facilities, began observations in July 2008, and will continue through 2014.

These study guides were created based on undergraduate courses taken at UC Berkeley from 1997-2001 and graduate courses taken at Harvard University in 2002-2003. They are posted as a public service to anyone interested in physics or taking college level Physics/Astronomy/Math courses.

he NASA Star and Exoplanet Database (NStED) collects and serves public data to support the search for and characterization of extra-solar planets (exoplanets) and their host stars. The data include published light curves, images, spectra and parameters, and time-series data from surveys that aim to discover transiting exoplanets. All data are validated by the NStED science staff and traced to their sources. NStED is the U.S. data portal for the CoRoT mission.

"The Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) is a research and education virtual laboratory dedicated to studies of the habitability of Earth, the Solar System, and exoplanets. Check the projects link for more details about the scientific projects. There are also links to scientific and educational materials, data and software tools related to planetary science and astrobiology that might be of interest to scientists, students, and the general public. The PHL is managed by the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo."

The University of Arizona is honored to be the first public university to lead a mission to Mars. The Phoenix Mars Mission, scheduled to land May 25, 2008, is the first in NASA's "Scout Program." Scouts are designed to be highly innovative and relatively low-cost complements to major missions being planned as part of the agency's Mars Exploration Program.

a joint Fermilab/SLAC publication

The Bolshoi simulation is the most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe yet made ("bolshoi" is the Russian word for "great" or "grand").  The first two of a series of research papers describing Bolshoi and its implications have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The first data release of Bolshoi outputs, including output from Bolshoi and also the BigBolshoi or MultiDark simulation of a volume 64 times bigger than Bolshoi, has just been made publicly available to the world's astronomers and astrophysicists.

"Breakthrough Listen data are stored in technical formats that require specialized software to analyze, and file sizes can be several gigabytes. Before downloading files from our public archive, we recommend you familiarize yourself with how the data are stored. A good place to start is with the educational materials provided by Berkeley SETI Research Center."

"The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog (HEC) is an online database of potentially habitable worlds discoveries for scientists, educators, and the general public. The catalog identifies, classifies, and compares exoplanets of interest for the search for life in the universe. There is no guarantee that any of these worlds are habitable since we know very little of them now. The catalog is maintained by the Planetary Habitability Laboratory @ UPR Arecibo and is updated as new data is available."

"The Open Exoplanet Catalogue is a catalogue of all discovered extra-solar planets. It is a new kind of astronomical database. It is decentralized and completely open. We welcome contributions and corrections from both professional astronomers and the general public."

"Berkeley SETI Research Center scientists and engineers are working with Breakthrough Listen to make data from Breakthrough available to the public, and you can choose a level of participation that matches your interest and abilities. Breakthrough data from the Green Bank Telescope are now flowing to SETI@home, and everyone can help out with the analysis! SETI@home is one of the world's largest citizen science projects, and enables users to donate a portion of their home computers' resources to aiding in our data analysis."

"The Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) is a research and education laboratory dedicated to studies of the habitability of Earth, the Solar System, and exoplanets. Check the projects link for more details about the scientific projects. There are also links to scientific and educational materials, data and software tools related to planetary science and astrobiology that might be of interest to scientists, students, and the general public. The PHL is managed by the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo."

ESO, the European Southern Observatory, builds and operates a suite of the world's most advanced ground-based astronomical telescopes

This website presents data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project to make a map of a large part of the universe. We would like to show you the beauty of the universe, and share with you our excitement as we build the largest map in the history of the world.