The Sloan Digital Sky Survey better known as the SkyServer is a rich website full of images from throughout the galaxy and beyond. The SkyServer aims to, in their words, “build the largest map in the history of the world.” The project is supported by NASA, the US Department of Energy, and National Science Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The galleries of famous places is one of the world’s most extensive public galleries of space imagery. To date over 50 million images have been captured. The famous places gallery is a nice resource to use in conjunction with the Celestia space exploration simulator.

Applications for Educators
The SkyServer has a teachers section with an extensive list of lesson plans and materials appropriate for students in the upper elementary grades through high school. The “kids” section has information and activities students can access and learn from intuitively.
The image on the left came from the section on “famous places.” The famous places section is a great place to visit in conjunction with a space explorer simulation like Celestia that I reviewed on Sunday.