Astronomy links

These links are particularly appropriate for our level 1 Astronomy class (now part of PX1511 and PX1512). They are grouped under 4 main headings: GENERAL, SOLAR SYSTEM, SPACE and OBSERVATORIES & BODIES

General Stellarium is a free, downloadable program that helps you identify what you can see on a starry night in any direction. You can superimpose both schematic and artistic constellation outlines, superimpose co-ordinates, speed up the rotation of the sky and zoom in, but it is not too cluttered with options and is simple to use. You can set your location. Aberdeen's is 57 degrees North, 2 degrees West and about 30 m in height. You can put a copy on your own PC or use the copy in the computer class-rooms that is in the Physics group of programmes. Astroweb from the University of Strasbourg lists some 3000 astronomy related web sites containing pictures, down-loadable programs, detail of research programs, astronomical departments and societies and much more. Its homepage is nicely divided into clear categories. For a meta-site along the lines of this page, with a better index but not tailored to our course, look at Astronomylinks.com. A detailed browsable on-line dictionary of astronomy that may keep you engrossed for a good while A good version of the Messier catalogue The NASA catalogue of on-line books may be helpful Jim Kaler supplements his excellent books by a very useful web-site that helps you find what's in the constellations and includes many 'star stories' from recent discoveries to their historical associations Windows to the Universe is a brilliant site likely to make you late for classes as you get totally absorbed in the material. Very good arrangement of content, plenty of detailed information with relevant pictures linked straight to the text. Numerous hypertext links to explore specific interests. Leicester University's guide to space and astronomy has had a make-over that emphasises their department but it still contains readily accessible images and text. The Astronomy Cafe is a highly recommended site run by professional astronomer Sten Odenwald who answers visitors questions (over 3000 are posted) and has good web links to other sites. Nasa Spacelink gets you to Nasa's resource centre especially for teachers and astronomy classes. The Space Educators' Handbook includes more than 2000 files, with a Windows downloadable resource. New Scientist Space is the web page of the New Scientist magazine that includes up-to-date news and articles relevant to astronomy and space, and previous items. There is easy access from there to all other New Scientist's web pages. Astronomy news is well displayed here. Also worth visiting is Astronomy Magazine which claims to be the most popular English-speaking astronomy magazine for the enthusiast. Look at Sky & Telescope's 'observing' pages for a view of what to see in the sky just now, including the whereabouts of the planets. The web page of Jay M. Pasachoff supports the astronomy textbook ASTRONOMY: FROM THE EARTH TO THE UNIVERSE (Brooks/Cole Publ., 6th edn 2002; ISBN 0-534-42197-0) which is pitched at the same level as the text for this course. You can try this site in addition to the site supporting the course text IN QUEST OF THE UNIVERSE Project CLEA is based in Gettysburg University (USA) and develops laboratory exercises that illustrate modern astronomical techniques. Each CLEA laboratory exercise includes a dedicated computer program, a student manual, and a technical guide for the instructor. The technical guides describe file formats, user-settable options, and algorithms used in the programs. All the computer programs and documentation can be downloaded from their ftp site. NASA provides a useful launch site to the huge range of space-probes and satellites that now exist. BUBL provide a wide ranging index of subjects with many interesting links in both astronomy and meteorology. Try under 'A' for Astronomy and Astrophysics, 'C' for Cosmology, 'P' for Planet, 'S' for Space Science and Sun, etc. The SkyWatch project invites everyone to design, develop and implement projects and activities with the use of the Robotic Telescopes. Yes, that means you, too. Another site for personal involvement is galaxy zoo, where as part of a real science project you are invited to take part in the next stage of classifying some of over a million galaxies imaged in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For those more up-to-date than we are, there's an i-phone app that converts your phone to a wonderful astronomical dial. Solar System The nine planets is a collection of many pages that contain information about the Solar System. It is intended for a general audience but is kept up-to-date. All the technical terms and proper names are defined in the glossary. There is one page for each major body in the Solar System. Each page has: a large picture of its object and usually several smaller thumbnail images (all linked to their full-size originals) some scientific and historical facts about it if the object has satellites then its page has a table of data on them and links to their pages links to more images and information about the object elsewhere on the Web, and a list of open issues for which we as yet have no answers. There are also a few miscellaneous pages: on planetary science spacecraft, the glossary, a comprehensive list of planetary images available elsewhere on the Net, some bits of history, several pages of data and a special plea for your support of the space program. An excellent source of pictures is NASA's Planetary photojournal site. JPL's solar system simulator lets you see the view you will get of any planet and a range of moons from an almost equally wide range of chosen places. You can see very clearly how much of thee sunlit part of your chosen object is visible. The Minor Planets Centre has excellent plots of the inner and outer solar system including many minor planets, lists of objects with unusual orbits, a list of forthcoming close approaches to Earth, and more. See also NASA's near earth object program. This site includes java applets showing animated near Earth asteroid orbits. Spacewatch is a programme that looks to detect asteroids and comets in particular. For more on Comets, see under the 'Earth' section below. The NEAR site shows impressive pictures of the asteroid Eros that NASA explored with a satellite in orbit around the asteroid. This link gets you to a quick reference table of all NASA's Space Science Missions, past, operating, in development and under study. The jet propulsion laboratory home page has many high quality pictures with informative captions concerning both past and future missions The SOHO misssion is one of the most successful probes of the 1990s, involving the continuous observation of the Sun from a vantage point about 1.5 million kilometers closer than the Earth. SOHO has greatly increased our knowledge of the Sun. X-ray and gamma ray images of the Sun can be seen at the Yohkoh site and its follow up Solar-B (Hinode). See Ulysses for the mission to study the Sun's polar regions, not well seen from the Earth. Ulysses has now stopped data collection. You can also find quite reliable sunspot cycle predictions. For science news and information about all aspects of the Sun-Earth environment, see the Spaceweather site and for technical information go to the National Geophysics Data Center or NOAA's Space Environment Center . Launched in 2001 specially to study space weather is ESA's CLUSTER II mission. Bringing some of this science together is the International Solar Terrestrial Physics Program. An excellent over view of solar physics can be found at the Marshall Space Flight Center. For a picture of the current phase of your chosen solar system object as seen from the Earth, see the diskmap site of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Mercury NASA's MESSENGER mission was launched in 2004 and is now (2011) orbiting Mercury after 3 fly-bys. It is exploring the planet's chemistry, physical evolution, geological history, atmosphere, magnetosphere, and plasma environment. Venus ESA's Venus Express now orbiting the planet has been given an extend life until end 2012. Mars The atlas of Mars as the title suggests this site is full of pictures of Mars Nasa's marsweb pages dedicated to Mars missions from Pathfinder through the following series of surveyors to the latest lander. Separate pages show all the raw pictures taken by Spirit and Opportunity. See 2001 Mars Odyssey and the robotic geologists. Mars Global Surveyor pictures are available to the world. The Global Surveyor has been replaced by the 2001 Odyssey (see line above) which has very good pictures of the day. ESAs Mars Express was successfully put into operational polar orbit in Jan 2004. The British Beagle 2 exo-biology lander is silent. The first of NASA's next generation of scouting missions is Phoenix, which landed in the polar region of Mars in May 2008. It is looking at the history of Mars' ice and in particular whether the frozen Martian soil contains residues of past life. Phoenix is led by the University of Arizona and made mostly of parts from previous failed missions - hence its name, and the connection with the town of Phoenix in Arizona. Jupiter The Galileo project home page includes lots of pictures taken during the Galileo project. If you want to do something different on a rainy day, why not build models of the Galileo probe or the Cassini probe. Saturn ESA's Cassini-Huygens probe is summarised, with active links to detailed experiments. Nasa's page on the Cassini probe also gives the latest on the mission status.The Cassini central imaging site is CICLOPS. Earth/Moon Moonconnection.com have an igadget that you can put on your iGoogle page (or elsewhere) that displays very nicely the current phase of the Moon. They also have a Moon calendar and lots of other 'stuff' relating to the Moon. View the Earth or Moon in simulation from selected locations in space. Well worth exploring. Over one hundred thousand real pictures of the moon are available from the Clementine mission. The Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon gives web access with good search facilities to high resolution (100 m) images taken by the successful lunar orbiter reconnaissance cameras in 1966/67. A good site for matching what you see on the Moon through binoculars to named features is The Hitchikers Guide to the Moon. Topographic images of unprecedented detail can be seen on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Goddard Space Flight Centre web page. The mission is still in progress in 2011. Nasa has produced a stunning view of the earth at night. The Constellations and their Stars is a very useful reference to the shape, whereabouts and legends associated with the constellations and all the stars with historic names. From another site, you can download monthly sky maps, and another offers clickable star maps. An applet showing stars visible in a particular direction at any time of the night at any place, with optional constellation figures, can be downloaded from the stargazer site. Finally, don't miss your sky an interactive planetarium that produces sky maps for your own location, with pan and zoom control, and more. The Comet observation home page has loads of pictures of various comets, including recent pictures. Another good site to find comet information is the International Comet Quarterly comet information website. Also recommended is a site covering both comets and meteors. NASA's Deep Impact mission to collide with a comet in July 2005 has been even more successful than hoped for. The stardust mission has returned collected material from comet Wild 2. On its way is ESA's Rossetta mission that will fly close to the nucleus of comet Wirtanen for 2 years, shadowing the comet from further out than Mars. The International Meteor Organisation offers a prime page for meteors. So, too, does the page of the American Meteor Society. For something very close at hand, look at the site devoted to terrestrial impact craters. Worth going to is the Natural History Museum's meteorite page. Observer's notes is a good supporting page for an introductory astronomy course. It gives details of how and when to make naked eye observations of stars, planets, meteors and other objects. There are hints on buying and using a telescope. Local detail refers to Los Angeles but most of the information is very useful. An example of a useful amateur astronomical page is David Howarth's contribution. A UK Aurora Watch web site operated by the University of York shows current activity and offers a service that will e-mail you when there is an auroral alert. An excellent Aurora page provides a guide to the Northern lights, a good tutorial description, predictions of forthcoming activity and more. NOAA provide a real-time plot of the auroral oval from data gathered by their POES satellite. Further real-time data is available from the Canopus project of the Canadian Space Agency. See also Auroras: Paintings in the Sky and try the University of Alaska auroral page. You can see the see the solar wind speed and interplanetary magnetic field direction about 1 hour before it reaches Earth thanks to the ACE probe about 1.5 million km nearer the Sun. The Bradford telescope is a remote autonomous 46cm telescope located in the Yorkshire Moors. Anyone on the Internet can register and ask the telescope to look at anything in the northern night sky. Observations are automatically prioritised and scheduled and completed by the telescope as time allows. Other data (weather information and reports) are obtained and updated on this site automatically every day. The Liverpool telescope is the largest robotic telescope in the world, run by the John Moores University of Liverpool. It has been erected in the Canary Islands for public use and is part of the Isaac Newton Group of telescopes (see later). The Gemini Project has involved building two state-of-the-art telescopes, each with 8.1m diameter objectives. Gemini 'North' is in Hawaii and Gemini 'South' one in Chile. Between them they can scan the entire sky. Both are contributing stunning images and a lot of new science. Britain is contributing 25% to the international consortium effort. For the vicarious observer, you can examine views of the complete sky in great detail over the full spectral range by visiting sky view. You'll need to remember the definitions of right ascension and declination, and know whereabouts in the sky objects of interest to you are. If you'd like to enthuse young friends or relatives about astronomy, do try astronomy with a stick. NASA's human space flight realtime data pages let you follow the location of the space station and shuttle missions, and provides background on the manned space program. A set of short historical lectures from Greek ideas to Einstein with special emphasis on the revolutions of thought introduced by Galileo, Newton and Einstein. With original quotations and some applets. Gravity Probe-B, a mission to test Einstein's theory of general relativity that has input from Physics in the University of Aberdeen is epected to produce its definitive results in December 2007. Eclipses The eclipse home page from NASA is a first stop for any eclipse enquiry. It gives details of the next solar and lunar eclipses as well as guides to eclipse photography, links to several publications, and much more. Scroll down below the logo to see the large list of links. A simple interpretative site worth visiting is Hermit eclipse. Lunar eclipse observer page contains details of past and future lunar eclipses. Space Looking for objects? Clusters and nebulae visible with binoculars can be readily located. The deep sky database will tell you the location of galaxies, clusters, nebulae, unusual objects, Messier and Herschel catalogue objects and more in any constellation. CCD Images of the Galaxy This site contains a wealth of information and pictures relating to various aspects of astronomy from dark matter to planetary motion and UFOs. The Hipparcos mission site tells you about the incredible stellar distance measuring program that has given us much more accurate distances for over 100,000 stars out to about 1000 parsecs away. For a well referenced guide to the search and discovery of planets orbiting around stars other than the Sun, see NASA's Planetquest site or the Paris Observatory's Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia. Visit a leading research site on the discovery of extrasolar planets at San Francisco State University. Among the many projects searching for extra-solar planets are Britain's SuperWASP and ESA's CoRoT, already observing, with project Darwin due for launch in 2015. Nasa's Kepler mission to observe transiting planets from space has also been obseving since 2009. The next few links move progressively up the electromagnetic spectrum. The UK is one of the world leaders in submillimetre astronomy, at the boundary between microwaves and the far infra-red, making high resolution imaging and photometry through the project SCUBA. The cosmic microwave background is a topic we'll hear more about in coming years. The first site to visit is the WMAP project. The Boomerang project among others confirmed that the spatial fluctuations in the background are consistent with a Euclidean geometry for the entire Universe. In the usual jargon, the Universe is spatially 'flat'. A mission that promises to revolutionise the quality of data that supports modern cosmology is ESA's Planck, launched succesfully in 2009. Planck is measuring very precisely irregularities in the microwave background. Infra-red Astronomy is particularly good at imaging cool objects, dust, gas, nebulae and objects generally hidden from visible light telescopes. The sky in the near infrared can be seen through the continuing work of the 2 micron all sky survey. The world's largest telescope dedicated to the infra-red is the United Kingdom Infra Red Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii. Launched in 2003, NASA's Spitzer telescope is the largest in space. Sofia (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy), an airborne 2.5 m telescope in a Boeing 747, has taken first star-light. So too has ESA's Herschel mission, launched in 2009, to explore the IR and microwave universe, taking spectra with unprecidented resolution. Going up the electromagnetic energy spectrum, the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer supplies unique spectral information in the 90 - 120 nm wavelength range used to pin down the distribution of deuterium and other elements in our galaxy. X-ray Astronomy is the subject of NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, launched in 1999. For the latest images, see Chandra News. The European Space Agency launched the impressive X-ray Multi-mirror Telescope (XMM) in December 1999 to explore some of the most violent regions in the Universe such as quasars, galactic nuclei and black hole binary star systems. Other X-ray missions that have already produced lots of results are the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer and the now terminated ROSAT. The sky observed at even higher energies with fine energy resolution is the remit of several measuring and mapping experiments aboard ESA's Integral (International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) mission, now successfully launched. Observations between 15keV and 10 Mev will provide insight into the violence of the universe. Coming soon is NASA's GLAST mission, the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope, due for launch in May 2008 into low Earth orbit and set to detect events in the energy range 8 keV to 300 GeV, events including those from very violent processes in the universe. Very high energy cosmic rays, some produced by the most violent events in the universe, are becoming the subject of a several international projects, opening a new window on the Universe. These include the Pierre Auger Observatory (in S. America), the HESS telescopes (in Africa) and the MAGIC telescope (in the Canaries). NASA's high energy astronomy video archive has animations and a section of historical videos. Off the electromagnetic spectrum and into elementary particles, neutrinos now play a central role in astrophysics, if not cosmology. Central to their role has been the question of whether they have a miniscule mass, which has being decided by neutrino oscillation experiments. Among many experiments world-wide, most impressive is IceCube, designed to look for high-energy neutrinos. Some other well-known ones are Amanda II, being operated at the South Pole; Antares, being put in place under the Mediterranean Sea; SNO, down a mine in Sudbury, and Super-Kamiokande, an international collaboration deep in a hill in Japan. Is there life out there? For some serious science in this area look at NASA's astrobiology pages and the Astrobiology web. For a useful resource on projects to investigate the nature, distribution and prevalence of life in the Universe, see the SETI homepage. There is not so much on the web in the subject of astrophysical chemistry or astrochemistry but we'll hear more about this branch in coming years. Ever wondered about the orbits of multiple star systems? Look at some solutions to orbits in 3-body systems and a few orbits for more than 3 bodies. For something a bit different, try a virtual trip to a black hole or neutron star with mpeg animation and explanation. The more serious astronomer should look at the Aladin Star Atlas which is a java based facility allowing you to produce your own annotated star maps. Also from the University of Strasbourg for the serious astronomer are on-line databases such as Simbad that allow access to star catalogues with over 2 million astronomical objects. See also the Digitised Sky Survey. Progress is going well towards an international virtual observatory that will embody a collection of web-based software tools accessing interoperable astronomical databases. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Hubble Space Telescope Information How to get the latest pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and more. Pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope includes loads of pictures from Hubble as well as press releases about the telescope. Future missions ESA's 'Cosmic Vision' missions over the approximately the next 10 years have been decided. They include BebiColombo, an exploration of planet Mercury, the Laser Interferometric Space Antenna (LISA), a joint project with NASA to put a gravitational wave detector into space, a 15% contribution to the James Webb Telescope (formerly known as the Next Generation Space Telescope, Hubble's successor), and Solar Orbiter, a probe designed to fly much closer to the Sun than Mercury. There is input to LISA from Glasgow University and to the Solar Orbiter from St Andrews University. See NASA's full list of their science missions and the stages they are at. Observatories and Bodies The Aberdeen Astronomical Society has a web-site with an interesting programme of activities. The Society meets monthly during the winter at the Cromwell Tower. The Royal Observatory Edinburgh is in one of the world's leading observatories, in charge of astronomical facilities in Hawaii and Australia. It also sells galactic and stellar images through posters and photographs. The Anglo-Australian observatory has pictures and information that can be down loaded or viewed online. The Isaac Newton Group of telescopes (ING) in La Plama is a major international facility managed by the UK astronomy community. European Association for Astronomy Education is based in the European Southern Observatory in Germany and aims to promote astronomy education in Europe. UK Research Council that now funds Astronomy (STFC) Find out what current research is being funded in the UK and why UK astronomy is among the best in the world. The Royal Astronomical Society has been active since 1820, publishing leading journals, arranging regular meetings and acting as co-ordinator of academic astronomical research. Nowadays, it also encompasses geophysics. The European Space Agency (ESA) Europe's equivalent to NASA that has an active program of satellites and space probes and is undertaking an increasing amount in collaboration with NASA. British National Space Centre will tell you about the UK's space programme. The Amateur Sky Survey (TASS) is an internet linked group of amateurs interested in surveying the sky for variable stars and new sightings.