i've noticed more and more lately people uploading works that they didn't take-- generally works that were IMPOSSIBLE for them to take. whether really old photos or NASA photos, etc... is this legal, to take a NASA photo for instance, and upload it as your own? even if you've done a little editing to it. and it certainly doesn't seem fair as far as the prestige/author list goes.

it seems like works like that shouldn't be on this site, or if they should they should be attributed to unknown or nasa or sometihng.

I upload NASA pics because I'm crazy about space pictures, but I make doubly sure that they are clearly shown as taken by NASA. Most of the pictures NASA takes are in the public domain and can be freely used.

As far as the author list is concerned, I don't really care about that. If a specific gallery could be created to upload NASA pics to where the pictures don't count as your own works, I would be more than happy with it.

i love them too, i just think they dont always get clearly credited. i dont want the site to ever get in trouble... but that reminds me! have you see the article on the net about the new NASA photo of a star burst or whatever, that they are saying looks like Van Gogh's "Starry night"? i dont agree, but it is awesome

Yup... gonna upload it soon. It's the same star system as in Star V838 Monocerotis. I also don't agree totally with the comparison, but it does look awesome.

The whole point of an image being in the public domain is that you can do whatever you want with it and don't have any restrictions placed on it's use. NASA images are not copyright protected because they were created by the federal government. Other astrophotography images (e.g. from large universities) however aren't nessesarily in the public domain though.