Astronomy Resources

See also Robert's Space Resources.

Overview

• Latest News
• General Information (Generally Text based)
• Exhibits: (Tours/Encylopedic documents) (Generally Graphics Based)
  • Datasets
• Interest Groups
• Image Archives
• Software
  • Macintosh
  • Unix
  • Windows
• Other Sites
• Miscellaneous

Latest News

• Robert's Comet Hyakutake page (with a Chicago viewing orientation, but most material of general interest/usefulness).

• Chiron Perihelion Campaign

• The Web Nebulae

• Saturn Ring Plane Crossings and another RPC site

• This Month in History

• Supernova 1995F discovered by amateur astronomers in Canada

• 75th Anniversary Astronomical Debate Home Page:
  In April 1920, Harlow Shapley and Heber D. Curtis debated "The Scale of the Universe"... In April 1995, 75 years after the "Great Debate", Donald Lamb (Chicago) and Bohdan Paczynski (Princeton) will debate "The Distance Scale to Gamma-Ray Bursts"

• See also:
  • The Sky this month
  • MarsToday: "contains daily conditions on Mars and its relationship to Earth"
  • Hubble Space Telescope's latest observations
  • American Insitute of Physics' Physics News Update Newsletter

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Information

• General Astronomy Information Leaflets from the Royal Greenwich Observatory

• FAQ of the sci.space newsgroup and Astro/Space frequently seen acronyms
  Also the Cosmology/Astrophysics portion of the sci.physics FAQ

• ATM Resources and Software (ATM = Amateur Telescope Making)

• Purchasing Amateur Telescopes FAQ (Postscript version is also available: Part I and Part II.)

• Astronomy-related Newsgroups Resources

• Automated Telescopes

• The most excellent Earth Viewer

• Comets Observation Home Page

• Chiron Perihelion Campaign

• The Ascending Node, the SEDS newsletter

• International Dark-Sky Association and Nightime images of Earth showing the extent of light pollution.

• Occultations by Solar System Objects

• StarDate radio show (script) from McDonald Observatory. (Astronomical viewing and research reports.)

• Earth and Sky mailing list of transcripts from the radio show. Also an archive.

• The SETI Institute and the SETI League (SETI = Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence)

• Planetaria

• NASA Eclipse Bulletins

• Astronomy Camps run by the University of Arizona Alumni Association

• "Origin of the Universe" and "Baby Universes, Children of Blackholes" (Hawking speech texts)

• Coordinate Conversion and Coordinates in Astrophysics.

• Book reviews from the newsletter of the Ames (Iowa) Area Amateur Astronomers.

• Ansel Adams photographs of Hat Creek radio astronomy observatory and Lick Observatory

• Large Scale Phenomenon Network of the International Halley Watch

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Tours/Encyclopedic Documents

• The Nine Planets: An excellent WWW reference to our Solar System (Also an European mirror.)

• Views of the Solar System

• Messier Catalog

• The Northern Lights - Aurora Borealis

• Earth and Universe, an HTMLization of the CD-ROM.

• Datasets
  • Face of Venus and The Venus HyperMap: "Learn about the surface of the planet Venus through hypertext documents and the interactive databases of craters and coronae."

  • Star Catalogs and constellation boundaries. (For the SAC, you will need an UnZIP program

  • Atlas of Mars and Viking Orbiter image-finder

  • The PDS microwave subnode provides a browser for Magellan images of Venus.

  • Planeraty Maps FAQ

  • NSSDC Planetary FAQ and PDS (NSSDC = National Space Science Data Center; PDS = Planetary Data System)

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Interest Groups

• Astronomical Society of the Pacific and Astronomical Society of the Atlantic

• Ames (Iowa) Area Amateur Astronomers

• The Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers (SARA)

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Image Archives

• NSSDC Photo Gallery includes the famous Family Portrait (NSSDC = Nation Space Science Data Center)

• Clementine image browser is now available!

• The infamous Explorer, look in GIF and JPEG. Holds a lot of other good stuff too.

• The CNAM archive in France

• Anglo-Australian Observatory

• Animations from STScI

• Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Educator's Guide

• Galileo Probe

• USGS (Viking) Mars Color Mosaics and Viking Image Archive (USGS = United States Geologic Survey)

• GOES Image Sequences of Solar Eclipse on May 10, 1994.

• Someone's solar eclipse images

• Astro FTP list

• See also: Malin Space Science Systems

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Software

• Macintosh
  • MoonTool 1.01

  • Starry Night, a wonderful virtual plantarium.

  • Invisible Universe

  • MacAstro 1.6

  • MAIA 2.1b, "an image enhancement and analysis program, designed espeically for analyzing astronomical images. It requires a Mac with a 68020 or higher processor, a math coprocessor, and 16- or 256-color display. The shareware fee is $20.00 (US)."

  • See also Exploration in Education

• Unix
  • Xsky, "an interactive sky atlas for the X Window System."

  • Xephem

  • "Skymap is an interactive astronomical display program which draws a map of the sky on any Tektronix-compatible graphics terminal, such as xterm."

  • XEarth, see the world turning on your desktop!

• DOS/Windows
  • HomePlanet

  • SkyMap

  • Invisible Universe

  • David Chandler has done some really useful work including:
    • Deep Space "observer-oriented astronomy software"
    • Planet Tracker: "classroom-oriented software to teach the concepts of planetary motion"
    • Deep Space Navigator: "hardware telescope-computer interface" (makes use of the Deep Space software)

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Other Sites

• Mike Boschat's Astronomy Page

• Astronomy and Astrophysics from the Virtual Library

• Science:Astronomy from Yahoo

• Astronomy Net-Resources, of a professional/research orientation (Provided courtesy of STScI.)

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Miscellaneous

• Name a Neutrino! A great idea for profit (yeah, but can it fund the SSC? :-) from Bill Higgins. (Ever hear of the International Star Registry? ...)
• Scientific Data Format information FAQ
• Fortran 90 resources

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May 11, 1995 - Robert Lentz (ralentz@ralentz.com)