The Planetary Virtual Observatory and Laboratory is a web service that stores and displays a database of amateur and some professional observations of Solar System planets. PVOL grew up in the context of the International Outer Planets Watch and was a database of observations of Giant Planets for a large part of its history. The new PVOL also hosts observations of all solar system planets and large satellites.
You can either register in the PVOL system in order to upload the images or send an e-mail to the PVOL system manager
If you choose to register, please fill in the form in the Upload image in the top menu. You will be able to upload images through a web interface. If you are a first time user your images will be verified by the system manager before they become available.
Yes. The new PVOL will keep track of the different images in a single image file. The file containing the images will be named according to data of the first image in the file.
Our search engine (button “Search data”) supports a variety of searches from simple searches to more complex ones. Results can be obtained in gallery mode (similar to ALPO Japan) or as a list of images that can be zipped in a single file and downloaded.
Once an image is uploaded the system changes its name using data from the upload query form and it translated the original name into a common filename system. Note that you do not have to change the name of the file but all image files downloaded from PVOL will have a similar code in the filenames.
An explanation of the filename structure and each identifier is given below. The image should follow the format oYYYY-MM-DD_hh-mm(-ss)_filter_obs.jpg, where
o refers to the celestial object.YYYY-MM-DD refer to the date you took the first observation using the ISO 8601 format.hh_mm refer to the time you took the first picture in 24 hour format and in Universal Time.ss refers to the seconds of the time you took the first picture and is an optional parametre.filter refers to the filter(s) you've used while taking the image(s).obs will be your username.