Category Archives: Image Archive

NASA on The Commons

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From nasaimages.org, a service of Internet Archive:

Internet Archive, NASA, and Flickr are together launching NASA on The Commons, a new way to view and interact with photos from NASA. NASA on The Commons invites the public to contribute information and knowledge to curated photo sets provided by nasaimages.org.  Visitors will be able to add tags, keywords, and annotations to three compilations of images curated by the New Media Innovation Team at NASA Ames and NASA photography and history experts across the Agency. The three collections, spanning more than half a century of NASA history, include: Launch and Takeoff, Building NASA, and Center Namesakes.

“NASA’s long-standing partnership with Internet Archive and this new one with Yahoo!’s Flickr provides an opportunity for the public to participate in the process of discovery,” said Debbie Rivera, lead for the NASA Images project at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “In addition, the public can help the agency capture historical knowledge about missions and programs through this new resource and make it available for future generations.”

NASA on The Commons will make the NASA Images collection accessible to a wider audience while improving the information that accompanies these images with the help of the public.
Read more about NASA on The Commons.

New NASA Images Guest Showcase: June Lockhart

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From NASA Images:

NASA Images is proud to welcome June Lockhart to the Guest Showcase line-up in June Lockhart: The NASA Diaries.

June has been involved with NASA for years.  She has attended shuttle launches, opened the Kids Space Museum at the Johnson Space Center, and helped NASA celebrate the 40th anniversary of Apollo. She has been a long time supporter of all things NASA. June takes this opportunity to share some of her dearest memories of her relationship with the space agency:

“’…There’s a new sunrise in space every hour and a half – so the song would be very appropriate.’ It was astronaut Ken Reightler speaking in response to my suggestion that my fathers song ‘The World is Waiting for the Sunrise’ would be a good wake up tune for the astronauts on the upcoming shuttle flight Columbia. We played the Les Paul and Mary Ford version of the song just after 2 a.m. On October 27, 1992. I was there in the mission control viewing room and listened to the music fill the sky. My father would have loved it. My eyes filled with tears…”

“…Bill Mcarthur and I shared some phone calls during his time on the ISS in 2005. On December 16, I went to JPL for a video conference. We sent films and photos and a poster of me in my space suit from ‘Lost In Space’ which he had posted on the wall of the ISS. He said I was the first pin-up in outerspace!”

Check out June Lockhart: The NASA Diaries at nasaimages.org

NASA Images selected as one of MARS Best Free Reference Web Sites of 2010

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From NASA Images blog:

NASA Images has been selected as one of the MARS Best Free Reference Web Sites of 2010, an annual series initiated under the auspices of the Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of the American Library Association (ALA) to recognize outstanding reference sites on the World Wide Web. This years list consists of 30 sites recognized by MARS as outstanding for reference information, view the list here.

Kudos to the NASA Images team: Jon Hornstein, Jake Johnson, Greg Williamson and Samantha O’Connell.

-Jeff Kaplan

"Houston, we’ve had a problem"

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The now famous words spoken by Jim Lovell in 1970 in the ill-fated Apollo 13 flight. There was a reunion of astronauts and control crew to celebrate the 40th anniversary. NASAimages has many great photos and video from the flight. Here are a few of my favorites.

Video:
The news bulletin.
The duct tape fix!
Re-entry and recovery!

Images:
Tense ground control.
Success celebrated on the ground!

Check out more at NASAimages.org.

-Jeff Kaplan

NASA partners with Internet Archive to archive digital imagery

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nasaimages - thousands of images to discoverFrom Jon Hornstein at Internet Archive’s NASA images:

NASA gave a nice shout-out to the Internet Archive for helping them address their Open Government Initiative requirements. http://www.nasa.gov/open/plan/records-management.html

Here’s a couple of choice quotes . . .

“. . . (the Internet Archive) serves as custodian of much of NASA’s current and legacy digital imagery records. In addition, IA will help digitize NASA’s historically significant, analog images for inclusion on the Web site, enabling digital archiving with the National Archives and greater public access to these records via the IA Website.”

“Strictly on its own initiative, IA recently began to capture NASA’s publicly posted social media content. NASA is considering exploration of how this activity might be leveraged for records management purposes.”

There’s always cool stuff to be discovered at NASA images: http://nasaimages.org

-Jeff Kaplan

Valentine's Day Ideas : Dogs, Dinosaurs, Spiders and Craters

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Valentine’s Day is this weekend so I decided to do a little rooting around the Archive. I found some very cool stuff but a stop animation that was brought to my attention was so cool I wanted to post it first. It is a twisted story of love and lust. Check it out, just amazing:

Duffy the Mascot (1934) – http://www.archive.org/details/Duffy_the_Mascot

Which got me thinking about stop animation in general. Turns out we have several versions of the first major film by the early master Willis O’Brien, “Lost World“: http://www.archive.org/details/lost_world

He was the inspiration for the great Ray Harryhausen. We have an early short from him: http://www.archive.org/details/mother_goose_little_miss_muffet

Finally, for your astronomy minded lover might I suggest NASAimages’ hearts of Mars: http://ia311025.us.archive.org/1/items/PLAN-PIA05296/PIA05296.jpg

Superbowl and New Orleans

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OK, I confess I was more interested in seeing if Pete Townshend would do some windmill leaps and trash his guitar at the end of their halftime show.

Still I thought I’d check up on some stuff about New Orleans at the archive.org

I first took a look at the space view of the Crescent City from NASAimages: http://www.archive.org/details/VE-IMG-17299

Then to set the mood put on a little music from The Radiators: http://www.archive.org/details/rads2010-01-02

And read a little of this old text from 1914: New Orleans Old and New: http://www.archive.org/details/neworleansoldnew00alle

From it I learned that Carnival season started in 1827. Here’s a slightly more recent view of Mardi Gras from 1941: http://www.archive.org/details/Paradeof1941

Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints and all the people in the Crescent City.

-Jeff Kaplan

Celestial Marbles and Floating Sombreros

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Take a break from a hectic day and enjoy the peaceful awe of our universe. “Things That Float” by Stephen Nowlin is the first monthly Guest Showcase in Internet Archive’s collaboration with NASA images. http://words.nasaimages.org/2010/01/11/guest-showcase1/

Mr. Nowlin wrote: “We’re charmed by heavy things that float in thin air, because we’re products of a gravity environment where weight is pinned to the planet’s surface.  When something does otherwise, it arouses the pleasure of our curiosity – it’s a spectacle, and inspiring. ”

All the images are spectacular. I think we often forget the remarkable work that goes into the NASA programs that allows us to see such vivid images of space. It is a wonderful presentation of carefully selected images accompanied by the music of Claude Debussy.

Check out the floating astronaut with jet pack at 2:34, the streaked and speckled moons that look like marbles at 3:57, and at 5:40 all I could say about the celestial sombrero was “what is that?!”

Awesome indeed.

-Jeff Kaplan

Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map

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For science geeks, the United State Geological Survey (USGS) is a beloved and respected organization providing a source of thorough scientific research which delves into the subjects of geology, biology, geography, and water, among others.

An important and lasting project of the USGS has been their work with topographical and interactive maps. The Internet Archive houses a collection of more than 50,000 of their United States maps which are given freely for use in outdoor recreation, scientific research, emergency response, or general interest.

Here are some particularly interesting maps:

  • Glen Arbor, Michigan
  • Half Dome, California
  • Central Park, New York
  • Chicago Loop, Illinois
  • Grand Canyon, Arizona
  • New Orleans, Louisiana
  • Honolulu, Hawaii

    • –Cara Binder

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