- Astronomy Resources from YAHOO
- Astronomy Resources from STScl
- Internet resources in astronomy including mailing lists, personal web pages, and telescopes. This source is geared towards the professional astronomer.
- Astronomer's Bazaar
- Contains on-line catalogs and information on obtaining catalogs from other sites.
- Astrogeology from the USGS
- Star*s Family
- Searchable database of international associations and organizations.
- Astronomical Society of the Pacific
- Maintains a list of amateur astronomy clubs in the U.S. and Canada.
- Encyclopedia Astronautica
- Provides a wealth of information on the U.S. and Russian space programs.
- Famous Astronomers and Astrophysicists
- Provides capsule biographies of many men and women have made important contributions to our knowledge of the universe.
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- Deep Space Network
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- NASA News Bulletins
- Information on Space Shuttle schedules.
- Space Calendar
- Updated monthly.
- ADS: NASA's Astrophysics Data System
- A search engine covering over 200,000 astronomy-related abstracts from 1975-, scanned images of articles from the Astrophysical Journal (1975- ), and over 200,000 abstracts pertaining to Space Instrumentation.
- Planetary Fact Sheets
- Produced by the National Space Science Data Center and provide extensive statistical data on the nine planets, selected comets and asteroids. Similar to the Nine Planets site listed below, but without graphics and narrative. If you're interested in NASA images of planets and moons, JPL's Photojournal site provides an easy way to access them. The independently produced Views of the
Solar System uses NASA imagery and text to provide a multimedia guide.
- Solar Eclipse Information (Solar Data Analysis Center)
- Provides "one stop shopping" for eclipse information. Fred Espenak's Eclipse
Home Page provides information on past and future solar and lunar eclipses.
- NASA Space Science Missions
- An extensive list of past, present and possible future missions.
- The Webb Space Telescope
- This successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is scheduled for launch in 2010.
- Infrared Astronomy
- Provides an introduction to this important branch of astronomy. The site includes a gallery of infrared images.
- Near-Earth Object Program
- Established by NASA and JPL in 1998 to "provide a focal point for the study of comets and asteriods which can approach the Earth's
orbit".
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- Big Bear Solar Observatory
- Daily solar activity.
- Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ.
- U.S. Naval Observatory
- Cerro Tololo (Chile)
- Cerro Paranal (Chile)
- Home to the VLT (Very Large Telescope) which actually consists of four separate telescopes, each with a mirror
over eight meters in diameter. The telescopes are linked together electronically, creating the world's largest
optical telescope. Construction was completed in mid-2000.
- U.C. Santa Cruz, Lick Observatory Contains searchable catalogs
- Calar Alto (Spain)
- Hobby-Eberly Telescope (Texas)
- The World's Largest Optical Telescopes
- The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes
- Three telescopes located in the Canary Islands.
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- Spaceweather.com
- Provides information on the Solar-Earth environment including Solar wind, Solar flares and Earth-crossing asteriods and
meteor showers.
- The Nine Planets: A Multimedia Tour of the Solar System
- Astronomiae Historia/History of Astronomy
- Images from the Hubble Space Telescope
- Some of the more spectacular HST images are preserved at Hubblesite.
- Stars and Constellations
- Contains lists of named stars, constellations and non-stellar objects from the Messier catalog.
- An Atlas of the Universe uses nine maps to show "what our universe looks like".
- The Sloan Digital Sky Survey
- Uses a 2.5 meter telescope to make five color images of large sections of the sky. Recently the SDSS imaged a
quasar of very high redshift, making it one of the most distant objects ever viewed by humans.
- Bad Astronomy
- Phil Plaitt's web site devoted to correcting "astronomical" errors in the media. Such diverse topics as the ability to
balance an egg on end only on the Vernal Equinox and the Fox network's TV special explaining how the Apollo moon landings
were "faked" by NASA are covered from a professional astronomer's perspective.
- Astronomy Notes
- Nick Strobel (Bakersfield College) created these notes for his introductory astronomy class. It's an online textbook
covering many different aspects of modern astronomy: the Solar System, the Milky Way and other galaxies and Cosmology.
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- Cosmology (Selected Resources)
- UCLA professor Ned Wright gives an on-line college-level tutorial
on Cosmology. Included are discussions of the age, density and size of the universe. The UCSB Physics Department is represented in
the Boomerang or Balloon Observations
of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and
Geophysics project which maps the Cosmic Microwave Backround using a balloon-borne telescope which circumnavigates
Antarctica. Cambridge Relativity is a site devoted to basic explanations
of the Big Bang, Black Holes etc. There is a link to Prof. Stephen Hawkings' web site.
The Cosmic Distance Scale is produced by NASA to show the
unimaginably vast distances of the visible universe.
- Supernovae
- Supernovae, or star explosions, are among the most violent events in the universe. A taxonomy flow chart complete with
bibliographic references is located at the Naval Research
Laboratory. Distant supernovae are being studied by the High Z SN Search group for cosmological research
purposes. The Supernova Cosmology Project at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab conducts
similar research. If you would like to join in the hunt for supernovae the web pages of the International Supernovae Network will provide information. Included are links to
lists of amateur contributions, as well as the distribution of supernovae in the night skies. A list of supernovae currently visible to amateur astronomers with
telescopes of moderate apertures (25 cm or larger) is maintained by David Bishop of the Rochester Academy of Science. Could life
on Earth be endangered by supernovae? Michael Richmond
examines the prospects.
- Gamma-Ray Bursters (GRB)
- These short, intense flashes of high energy radiation have been called "one of the outstanding mysteries in astronomy"
because no one can predict when they will occur or exactly where in the sky they will appear. A very basic explanation is provided on NASA's Imagine the Universe! site. A brief history has been provided by the Goddard Space
Flight Center. NASA's now defunct Compton Gamma-Ray Satellite contained a "Burst and Transient Source Experiment" to study
the phenomenon. The results have been cataloged. The Gamma-Ray Coordinates Network distributes radio and optical sources of GRBs in real
time.
- Extrasolar Planets
- Astronomers have provided evidence for planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. The Extrasolar Planetsearch group at San Francisco State University is responsible for many
(if not most) of the exoplanet discoveries. A group of astronomers headed by Michel Mayor at the Geneva Observatory is responsible for many other discoveries,
including the first confirmed exoplanet. The Paris Observatory has an Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia containing a bibliography, links to other sites, as well as a
list of stars suspected to have planets. Bill Arnett, author of the Nine Planets site listed above, has created an Other Solar Systems page containing concise information for the educated
layperson. Some dissident astronomers claim that
many of these discoveries are really brown dwarfs.
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- Your Sky
- An interactive planetarium which produces sky maps for a given time/date for a given location on the Earth's
surface. The Messier and NGC catalogs are used to display nonstellar objects. This site has many features normally
available only on commercial planetarium software.
- Digitized Sky Survey
- Images of user-selected objects outside the solar system.
- Astronomical Calculations from the U.S. Naval Observatory.
- Enter your city name and state to obtain sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset times. The output will also
provide your latitude and longitude, useful for some of the other resources on this page. From this site you can also
determine rise/set times for the planets and bright stars.
- Clementine
- The Naval Research Laboratory's Clementine spacecraft imaged the Moon in 1994. The site allows you to select from any
of the 1.8 million images acquired during the mission.
- Skyview
- "Generates images of any part of the sky at wavelengths in all regimes from radio to gamma-ray."
- Solar System Live.
- Online orrery.
- Solar System Dynamics
- Another interactive site from NASA and JPL. Allows one to generate comet ephemeris from a user-definable location,
view lists of all known planetary moons, and see "face on" models of the solar system complete with the asteriod belt.
- Atlas of Mars.
- Viking orbiter images in black and white.
- Hubble Guide Star Catalog
- Contains nineteen million objects! Compiled to help "point" the Hubble Space Telescope. Searchable.
- Interactive NGC Calalog Online
- Allows the user to type in the catalog number of an object and obtain data and an image from the NGC 2000.0 catalog and
the Digital Sky Survey. This site may not work with all browsers.
- J-Pass
- NASA's name for an interactive site which displays tracks of artificial satellites visible over a given location. If you
live in the USA and don't know your latitude and longitude, you may enter city name or your zip code to obtain this
information. Heavens Abovemaintains a similar site for generating visibility
predictions for satellites of magnitude 4.5 or brighter, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station. The
results are presented both in tabular and as a chart showing the path of the spacecraft against the backround of
"fixed stars".
- Java Jupiter
- Plots the position of Jupiter's four largest moons and the transit of the Great Red Spot across the face of the planet.
You may select different dates and times.
- Sky View Cafe
- Has a neat Java applet which can find your location automatically by using your computer's IP address. Using this information
this site will plot the planets, stars and Deep Sky Objects for a given time. It also will provide Sun rise/set and Moon
rise/set times, an orrery, daylight/night time hours and other information.
- An Atlas of the Universe
- Allows you to zoom from a point 12.5 light years from our Sun to view the entire visible universe!
- The Internet Stellar Database
- Provides data on many of the stars within 75 light years of the Sun, as well as some of the more well known stars
at greater distances. You can find the distance to Betelgeuse or Lalande 21185's proper motion.
- The Earth Impact Calculator
- Allows the user to calculate the effects of an asteriod or comet impact depending on user defined variables.
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