History

The Amateur Observers' Program was first designed to support the NASA Discovery mission Deep Impact. A similar program for technically proficient (semi-pro) amateurs had already been put together, but the DI EPO team recognized that the greater majority of amateurs and general public needed more information. And so the AOP was born.

About the original (version 1) banner:

The starchart and night sky view were generated in Starry Night Pro 4.0. The marked position for Tempel 1 is for July 2005. The two views were exported as images and then edited in Photoshop 7.0 (Deep Impact text and buttons).

About version 2:

In 2007, with the launch of the Dawn spacecraft imminent, the AOP was updated to meet the needs of the Dawn mission.

In 2010, content was updated for EPOXI.