Cloudy Night Astronomy

So it's rainy, snowy, stormy, or just plain yucky outside but you're itching to get a glimpse of your favorite space object. What to do? You're in luck! Some guy invented the internet just for you.

You could do a little digging and find these resources on your own but since I've already done some of the work I thought it would speed up your enjoyment to share. Some of these sites have images that are very large and if you're on dial up they'll take a long time to download. Fortunately the developers of many of the sites used low res (low resolution small file size images) so you can enjoy a smaller version of the same photo.

I've tried to include only sites that give indepth information about the images you'll find or sites that provide good search engines. Otherwise how will you learn anything new?

http://www.seds.org/images/ is from Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) hosted by The University of Arizona. It includes a searchable and browsable database of a lot of images and all good quality with too short information - but the search engine makes up for some lack of info. The main site does provide a great amount of indepth information, too.

http://www.kopernik.org/spaceimages/index.asp The Kopernik Polish Cultural Society of Broome County was founded in 1973 to help commemorate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Mikolaj Kopernik, a man known to the world as Copernicus - "the father of modern astronomy". The Kopernik Society undertook construction of the Kopernik Observatory in the fall of 1973. When the Observatory was opened to the public in June of 1974, the Kopernik Society donated the facility to the community to be operated by Roberson Museum and Science Center. Since that time hundreds of thousands of school children and families have seen the wonders of the universe through the Observatory's large telescopes.

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/ probably doesn't need much explanation. Some of the greatest deep space images of all time. The Hubble space telescope will soon be decomissioned but we have the images and you can access them any time from the dryness and comfort of your own home.

http://science.hq.nasa.gov/multimedia/index.html who could do space images and information better than NASA? You guessed it: nobody. Here is one of the most information packed collection of space images I've found. Enjoy!

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/photogallery.html the NSSDC photo library provided by NASA and FirstGov is very cool, too. It also provides, being a part of NASA, the same quality of images and information.

http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/app/gallery/search.asp great images from the Canadian Space Agency. Good information with each photo but a litte hard to use unless you know what you're looking for. The search engine is good but you'll need to know what to search for. Try typing in nebula or mars.

http://www.spacetoday.org/Weblinks/spacepix.html Space Today Online is very easy to read and provides very good basic language information. If you like Beginning Astronomy - Sky Watchers you'll love STO, too! "STO is a definitive news, information and education site on the World Wide Web dedicated to space science, astronomy and related subjects. By communicating the record of human activities in and about space, Space Today Online delivers on its commitment to a greater public understanding of and enthusiasm for human space research and travel."