Space
I'm also quite interested in space... that explains my desire to become an
astronomer and also why I double majored in planetary science as an undergrad.
So here are some of the astronomical resources I have found:
Institute and Project Homepages
Images, Maps, Data
- Moon
- Amateur Images
- Solar
- Earth
- Solar System, including spacecraft and manned mission images
- 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
Other
Links to astronomical journal homepages.
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