Space

Institute and Project Homepages

• The Project Galileo homepage
• The NASA homepage
• The Space Telescope Science Institute, the place responsible for the Hubble Space Telescope
• The Space Interferometry Mission homepage
• Spitzer Space Telescope
• The Kepler Mission homepage
• Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn
• MESSENGER mission to Mercury
• TRACE, the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer
• SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
• New Horizons, mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt
• Mars Express, spacecraft by the European Space Agency currently in Mars orbit
• Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, spacecraft currently in Mars orbit
• Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• GLIMPSE: The Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire, using the Spitzer Space Telescope
• Chandra X-ray Observatory Center

Images, Maps, Data

• Moon
  • Apollo Image Archive
  • Lunar Orbiter Photo Gallery
  • Maps of the Moon from Lunar Prospector
  • Inconstant Moon: multimedia tours of the lunar surface.
  • Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon
  • Consolidated Lunar Atlas, useful for small-scale features
  • Apollo Mission QuickTime Videos, made from Apollo Mission images
  • Apollo Over the Moon: A View from Orbit, from the NASA History Office. Has lots of images and describes everything learned about the Moon from the Apollo missions.
• Amateur Images
  • Robert Gendler's Astroimaging Gallery, which has some amazing amateur astronomy images
  • INAKA's 3D SPACE WORLD - this site has amazing stereograms of astronomical pictures taken by Akira Inaka.
  • Akira Fujii's constellation images
  • Dan Heller's tutorial on photographing star trails, with lots of images
  • Galactic Images: Astrophotography by John Chumack
  • Paul Mayo's Photos of the Australian Night Sky
  • Catching the Light, astrophotography by Jerry Lodriguss
  • Lorenzo Comolli Astronomy Homepage, with interesting animated sequences with digital cameras.
  • astropix.co.uk
  • Birds Astronomy Site
  • Damien Peach's Views of the Solar System
  • Astrophotography by Rolf Olsen
  • Caelum Observatory Image Galleries
  • Astrodon Imaging: Cosmic Images by Astrodon
  • Astrophotography by Ken Crawford
  • Deep Sky Colors
  • Dream Views of Night Sky and Nature
• Solar
  • Solar Terrestrial Dispatch, with real-time space weather plots, and also solar images
  • SpaceWeather.com, news and information about space weather events like meteor showers, solar flares, aurorae
  • The latest solar images taken at Big Bear Solar Observatory
• Earth
  • The night sky in the World, a site with satellite images showing light pollution around the world
  • The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth
  • AuroraMAX, images of the aurora
• Solar System, including spacecraft and manned mission images
  • Info on the Shoemaker-Levy 9 collision with Jupiter
  • NASA's Planetary Photojournal
  • NASA Planetary Data System MAP-A-PLANET
  • USGS Planetary GIF Server (PIGWAD), which gives planetary maps as well as geological information
  • National Space Science Data Center, which has all the images from NASA's planetary space probes
  • Regional and Planetary Image Facility, with space probe images, maps and mission info
  • JSC Digital Image Collection, which has images of and taken by all manned space missions
• Other
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day
  • NASA Images, including all images from NASA spacecraft, images of the manned missions, and images of other machinery and aeronautical objects.
  • Hubble Legacy Archive, where you can get images and data takn by the Hubble Space Telescope using a relatively user-friendly application.
  • The NOAO image gallery
  • New General Catalog web page with images
  • Sky View, a site that allows you to look up any astronomical object in a variety of wavelengths
  • NED, the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, with object info, data, images, and literature references
  • Sky & Telescope's Sky Chart, a simple planetarium program
  • General Catalogue of Variable Stars, online
  • The Two Micron All Sky Survey at IPAC (2MASS), has lots of images
  • USNO Image and Catalogue Archive
  • The Night Sky Live from various locations around the Earth
  • Virtual Reality All-Sky Milky Way Panorama, where you can pan, tilt, and zoom. Images by Axel Mellinger.
  • Edward Emerson Barnard's Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way, images scanned in from the classic atlas
  • SDSS Sky Server DR6, an interface to let you download data and images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
  • GLIMPSE/MIPSGAL Viewer at Alien Earths Online, Spitzer Space Telescope data

Human Space Flight

• Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, transcripts of all communications between the Apollo flights and mission control, along with explanations and commentary. Extremely extensive and complete.

Simulations

• An awesome solar system simulator that uses satellite images
• Solar System Visualizer, which shows the planets' and moons' orbits to scale, and includes some extrasolar systems. It was written by undergraduates in the Astronomy Department here at the University of Maryland.
• Rogue Star, a simulation that lets you send a "rogue star" into the solar system and see how the gravitational fields interact. Lot's of fun to break up the solar system.
• Powers of Ten, similar to the classic movie
• Galaxy Crash, a java applet that lets you collide galaxies
• SKY-MAP.ORG, which has a planetarium-style view of the sky, but you can select different catalogs to view and also user images of objects

Sources of General Astronomy Info

• The Nine Planets, a nifty multimedia tour of the solar system. Very comprehensive.
• Bad Astronomy -- examples of bad astronomy in the media and the real explanation
• Mark Wade's Encyclopedia Astronautica, with lots of info about the world's space programs
• Windows to the Universe, a user-friendly source of astronomy info
• The Constellations and their Stars: has info on constellations, the objects in them, and their mythology
• SPACE.com, which has astronomical and astronautical news
• NASA Astrophysics Data System, which can search for journal articles
• SIMBAD, which allows you to search for data on nearly any astronomical object
• Myths about Gravity and Tides, by Mikolaj Sawicki
• Curious About Astronomy? Ask an Astronomer by astronomers at Cornell University. Searchable list of past answers.
• Orbital Mechanics: lots of info on just how orbital mechanics work.
• SpaceNow, a Canadian website promoting the near-term human exploration and settlement of space. Their website has a lot of good info on orbital dynamics and rocketry.

Observational Aids

• NASA and Goddard's Eclipse homepage
• Find out when bright satellites such as Mir, the International Space Station and other will be visible in your location at Heavens Above
• JPL's Horizons, which computes ephemerides for solar system objects
• IAU: Minor Planet Center, where you can get ephemerides for asteroids
• Observational mishaps -- common aberrations and instrumental effects in CCD images and how to fix them
• USNO Astronomical Applications Data Services, with calculators for Sunrise, Moonrise, Moon illumination, solar systems, eclipses, etc., similar to the Astronomical Almanac
• The Bright Star Catalogue, a utility that converts star names from one catalog into another catalog. Not all of the conversions seem to work.
• The Bright Star Catalogue, split up by constellations
• Juplet, a java applet that shows the positions of the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter, their shadows, and the great red spot
• ObservingSites.com by Phil Harrington. People contribute dark-sky locations they know about.
• Clear Sky Clock Hompage: find the clear sky clock for the location nearest you to get hourly forecasts of cloud cover and transparency.
• CalSKY, a website that can help tell you when to observe nearly anything: Sun, planets, comets, asteroids, satellites, deep-sky objects.
• LAMBDA - Coordinate Conversions: celestial, ecliptic, galactic, super galactic.
• Tonight's Sky which will generate lists of what's visible tonight at your location.

Educational

• The Stanford Solar Center, providing Solar On-Line Activity Resources for the joy of solar science exploration
• An Ancient Universe: How Astronomers Known the Vast Scale of Cosmic Time, a newsletter on teaching astronomy in grades 3-12. This is an excellent overview lecture on astronomy beyond the solar system.
• Violence in the Cosmos, a good site on the "Explosive Processes and the Evolution of the Universe" with lots of pics and definitions.
• Role-Playing and Problem-Based Exercises for Teaching Undergraduate Astronomy
• Astronomy 122: Birth and Death of Stars, a class from the University of Oregon with lots of good notes and simulations online
• A Green Flash Page, which explains and simulates the creation of the green flash
• JK's Applets for Teaching Astrophysics, java applets on a range of subjects, including gravity, spectra, galaxies, stellar evolution.
• Project CLEA home page, with lots of small lab programs
• Explore Astronomy, the HubbleSite's page with neat interactive multimedia shows. The "black hole" interactive feature is especially good.
• AAVSO: Hands-On Astrophysics
• Galaxy Zoo: help identify galaxies from the Sload Digital Sky Survey

Space Art

• Novaspace Galleries, space art and memorabilia
• spaceart.org, space art on the web
• Lynette Cook - Space
• Extrasolar Visions, John Whatmough's art speculating what extrasolar planets might look like
• Dan Durda's Space Art Gallery
• Bill Hartmann's Painting Gallery
• David A. Hardy's AstroArt
• Don Davis Space Art

Other

• Photometric systems with transmission curves
• The Starlink Project, which has lots of interactive data reduction and analysis tools
• California & Carnegie Planet Search, searching for extrasolar planets
• The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia
• Astronomy students say the strangest things! collected by Bill Keel at the University of Alabama. At the end are funny things written by astronomers in their journal papers, which is even funnier. Someday I'll write my own student bloopers page...
• The Analemma, including how it would look from other planets.
• Magneto Mini Golf, a miniature golf game played in the Earth's magnetosphere
• transitsearch.org, looking for transits by extrasolar planets discovered by the radial velocity method
• Faces of Mars Puzzles, jigsaw puzzles made from Mars satellite images

avondale@astro.umd.edu