astronomy photos API

[rockystar]

Hi,

does anyone know of any open APIs that return images of deep sky objects? I'm specifcally (at the moment) looking for items in the NGC or IC catalog.

I'm aware of, and have used, the APOD (i have it changing my desktop background eveyday), and i've had a look at the NASA & Hubble image APIs, but neither really return what i want, as they use fairly generic search strings. Ideally I'd like something where i can make a call like so: GET /image?catalog=ngc&number=7000   and then i get (probably) a url to an image of the NAN.

Thanks

Rocky

[han59]

You can retrieve DSS1, DSS2 images online using RA,DEC coordinates and scale. I'm not aware if you can retrieve directly them based on name. ESO also allows to retrieve the images as GIF of JEPG Here some hints:

 

 

 

[rockystar]

Thanks han, I'll take a look at that. I have the RA & Dec of the objects, so that should work for me.

[rockystar]

works quite will for small objects:

https://archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_search?v=3&r=18h53m35.1&d=+33º01''47"&f=GIF

didn't work too well too well for the North American Neb - guess it's going to depend on the extent of the object, and where the RA/DEC is specified for large, extended objects.

 

Thanks again for your help, I'll keep having a play with those.