MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Contact: John G. Watson
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 9, 1999
FREE EVENING LECTURE BRINGS NASA PHOTOS TO YOUR FINGERTIPS
In its more than 40 years of existence, NASA has grabbed
hundreds of thousands of snapshots of our solar system and
beyond. But this tremendous image resource of knowledge and
wonder often seems beyond the reach of both the general public
and the science community.
Methods for everyone to access NASA's rich library of space
images through just a few keystrokes will be the topic of a free
lecture on Thursday, November 18, 7 p.m., at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, and on Friday,
November 19, 7 p.m. at The Forum at Pasadena City College, 1570
E. Colorado Blvd. Seating is first-come, first-served, and
parking is free.
"Public Access to Mission Data" will be presented by four
JPL space image data specialists who will provide an overview of
"Welcome to the Planets," an educational CD-ROM encompassing 190
images acquired over approximately 20 years of planetary
exploration. An online version containing selected images is
available at http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets.
Speakers will also describe NASA's Planetary Photojournal,
which uses Web technology to support a historical image archive.
More than 100,000 users access this site each month. This
service, designed to provide users with easy access to publicly
released images from various solar system exploration programs,
can be accessed at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov.
An additional topic will be the Planetary Image Atlas,
through which the public can search the vast amounts of primary,
raw data collected by numerous planetary missions. Designed to
provide access to all of the unprocessed data collected on NASA
missions, it permits scientists to search for data on various
planetary targets. It can be accessed at
http://www-pdsimage.jpl.nasa.gov/PDS/public/Atlas/Atlas.html.
The speakers are associated with NASA's Planetary Data
System, which archives and distributes digital data from NASA
missions, astronomical observations and laboratory measurements
(http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov), and JPL's Multimission Image
Processing Lab, which provides science instrument data display,
analysis, visualization, archival data record production and
photo processing for NASA's planetary missions and for the
Planetary Data System (http://www-mipl.jpl.nasa.gov/MIPS.html).
JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena. This lecture is part of the von Karman Lecture
Series, sponsored by the JPL Media Relations Office. Details:
(818) 354-5011,
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/lecture.
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