SkyView Virtual Observatory

If you or your kids are interested in beautiful astronomical images and are interesting in learning more and/or investigating images yourself, then you definitely need to check out the SkyView Virtual Observatory.

SkyView Virtual Observatory

This is a website operated by NASA that allows you to pick a piece of the sky and retrieve previously taken images using different telescopes at several different wavelengths.  If you know the coordinates of an object you wish to see you can enter those or you can enter random coordinates.  Then choose the telescope/wavelength you wish to see and in a few seconds an image pops up!

I plugged the coordinates (Googled them) for the Andromeda Galaxy and chose an optical image and out popped this:

That is super cool!  The full galaxy does not fit in this image, but I could go back and choose a larger image size.  I did, and here's what popped back to me:

Even cooler!  So check out the SkyView Virtual Observatory and mess around.  Try looking at objects using different cameras and different wavelengths.