DIY astronomical images

The European Space Agency, the European Southern Observatory, and NASA just released a free Photoshop plug-in that gives anyone access to archival astronomical images and spectra from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and others:

"If there is anything that unites astronomy, it is the worldwide use of a single file format – nearly all the images of stars and galaxies produced by telescopes on the ground and in space are stored as so-called FITS files. Unfortunately this file format has been accessible to very few people other than professional scientists using highly specialised image-processing tools."

The ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator provides direct access to the full 16-bit color images. For example, this image of the planetary nebula NGC 5979 was made with the FITS Liberator by compositing four individual exposures taken through various filters. Link