From the ESA Website:

"For many years astronomical images from the world’s telescopes were reserved for elite astronomers and technical people. Now anyone with a desktop computer running Adobe Photoshop software can try their hand at crafting astronomical images as beautiful as those from the Hubble Space Telescope. This free software plug-in, makes a treasure trove of archival astronomical and spectra from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and many other famous telescopes accessible to home astronomy enthusiasts."

Link can be found HERE.  Be sure to note the left-column of the page, which has links for more information, download, etc.

 

thanks!!

an awesome resource but call me paranoid but wont that hinder artistic development?

it can be useful to render something, and study it, then paint it - for those people who do not have astronomical software like Starry Nights or cartes du Ciel or Celestia..

Right...and I think it's like any other tool; it depends on how you use it.  Terragen is a very effective tool if a good deal of post-processing is applied and it is used in moderation (only a section of an overall image for example).  This is similiar...if nothing else, it serves to be very educational and help artists with accuracy.