The Spitzer Local Volume Legacy (LVL) survey is an imaging survey of several hundred very nearby galaxies found within the "Local Volume". The Local Volume is defined as those galaxies (and all other objects) found within 10 Mpc (32.6 million light years) of the Milky Way. For each galaxy, this survey has used various instruments to produce ultraviolet, H-alpha, broadband red, and infrared, images of several hundred nearby galaxies.
It is often quite difficult to access this sort of imaging data taken by professional astronomers, as it is so often hiding in large .fits files and/or it exists only in a very raw and noisy form.
However, there is now one website which has collected together all of this multi-wavelength imaging data for
several hundred galaxies within 32 million light years.
Furthermore, the imaging data is:
- often nice and clean (not as noisy as usual)
- available in excellent quality .jpg previews.
- available in .fits files
- full of images of little known but fairly bright southern galaxies
So, here is How to find this amazing resource:
Firstly access the home page for all infrared observations:
http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu
Then, in the sidebar at left, click on:
"Spitzer"
and "Legacy Programs Extragalactic Datasets"
and LVL
When the new webpage comes up, click on "Summary Pages" (which is a link within the text)
Enjoy!!
cheers,
Madbadgalaxyman
