I love those big, full resolution images that NASA makes accessible to the humans of the internet. Since they are often available in high resolution they make for an amazing source of gorgeous, varied and virtually endless selection of desktop images. I am always frustrated finding and keeping tracks of the wide range of repositories for these graphics. Here are some of the hot spots where you can access high resolution, freely downloadable space imagery.
European Space Agency launched an 8-ton satellite called Envisat that would deliver back to Earth some of the most beautiful images of our planet taken from space.
Recently released high resolution images from Nasa’s Mercury and Gemini Missions
GRIN is the Great Images in NASA collection, a large depository of NASA images, just start browsing around to discover stuff like this:
Oh, and here is a collection of Apollo only imagery
And how about a great NASA image conduit brought to you by the wonderful folks over at The Internet Archive.
NASA has an “image of the day” and it is usually worth a peek, here is a repository of them all.
This just popped up, a great Flickr page from NASA called NASA on the commons.
Dutch astronaut and physician Andre Kuipers brought his camera aboard the International Space Station and took some photos in his spare time. OK, these should keep you busy for awhile, if and when I find more collections I will post them here. If you have some to offer, please feel free to let me know.