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Astronomy 161: An Introduction to Solar System Astronomy Prof. Richard Pogge, MTWThF 9:30 |
Selected Astronomical Internet Links
This page presents selected Internet links to provide students in Astronomy 161 with some good starting points for their own explorations of Astronomy on the Web.
The topics are arranged in the order I usually follow when I teach Astronomy 161. Students of other 161 instructors should have no trouble using these links as I follow the basic order of topics as the basic syllabus we all use.
You can browse the whole document, or use the Index below to jump to a particular category. The primary links are given by the highlighted URLs offset from the text.
Disclaimer
All annotations and comments reflect my personal opinions, and do not
reflect the views of The Ohio State University or anyone else official or
otherwise represented by someone wearing a suit. Inclusion of a link does
not constitute an endorsement. Corrections and comments
are always welcome.
skytonight.com/observing/ataglance
Astronomy Picture of the Day! Every day a different picture from astronomy and space sciences is posted along with explanatory text written by the contributor. This service comes courtesy of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center:
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
What's New this week in the world of astronomy? Sky & Telescope provides a page for you to find out the latest news:
skytonight.com/news
The NASA Multimedia Gallery, a gateway into NASA's electronic archives of pictures, videos and audio clips, and public affairs information:
www.nasa.gov/multimedia
An incredibly complete resource for exploring the History of Astronomy, compiled by the Astronomische Gesellschaft at the University of Bonn:
www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~pbrosche/astoria.html
Interested in purchasing an amateur telescope? There are a number of guides, this is one of the better ones in circulation (originally based on questions compiled by Ronnie B. Kon, later updated by Dennis Bishop and many others). It is opinionated to be sure, but also thorough and thoughtful. Read this before you buy!
www.sipe.com/starcruiser/observatory/html/scopendx.htm
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www.fourmilab.to/earthview
How do we measure the Earth & make maps today? Find out at the OSU Center For Mapping:
www.cfm.ohio-state.edu
Andrew Wiesner at U. Penn. has put together a wonderful and fascinating Web Page on the fourth book of the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes, a 6th century native of Alexandria who advocated a flat, rectilinear earth & sky in contravention to the "pagan" idea of endless cycles. Find out why he felt this idea had to be attacked. A fascinating glimpse into the mind of a scholar from near the beginnings of the European "Age of Faith," with fine pictures from the manuscript - look for the early depiction of the earth-centered "pagan" solar system that appears at the top of this page.
ccat.sas.upenn.edu/awiesner/cosmas.html
The Time Service Department at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Wasington, D.C. is the official source of time used in the United States.
tycho.usno.navy.mil
A Walk Through Time is an overview of the Evolution of time keeping technologies brought to you by the The National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST, an agency of the Technology Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/time.html
An excellent overview of the Gregorian Calendar, written by Prof. Albert Van Helden at Rice University.
galileo.rice.edu/chron/gregorian.html
The Maya of Central America were accomplised astronomers. This webpage, by Michiel Berger of the Astronomical Institute at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, is an excellent starting point for learning about their achievements, as well a source of links to other Maya resources on the Web.
www.astro.uva.nl/michielb/maya/astro.html
Eclipses of the Sun & Moon are among the most spectacular of naked-eye phenomena. The definitive information site for past and future eclipses is the Eclipse Home Page maintained by Fred Espinak at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse.html
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galileo.rice.edu
A number of fine biographies of the astronomers we've met in this unit may be found on the web through the Astronomiae Historia pages maintained by the Astronomische Gesellschaft in Bonn, Germany. Here is where the links start for each (note these are whole pages in alphabetical listings): of
Nicolaus Copernicus
Tycho Brahe
Johannes Kepler
Galileo Galilei
Sir Isaac Newton
An excellent short biography of Isaac Newton, adapted from Richard Westfall's biography (Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton [1980]), provided by the Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge:
www.newton.cam.ac.uk/newtlife.html
A short, illustrated biographical sketch of Tycho Brahe from a site in Sweden:
www.nada.kth.se/~fred/tycho
Here is a collection of pictures of physicists, many of whom we've discussed in this class, as well as a few you will meet later in Astronomy 162:
charm.physics.ucsb.edu/people/hnn/physicists.html
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www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/ussher.htmAnd a portrait of the good bishop while we're at it, courtesy of the Armagh Obesrvatory:
star.arm.ac.uk/history/ussher.html
The United State Geologic Survey (USGS) in Menlo Park, California is the central agency dealing with Geology and Earth Sciences in the public trust. Here are some particularly interesting USGS Links:
Earthquake Central
quake.wr.usgs.gov
A webpage with some graphics on Continental Drift, featuring the Grand Canyon:
www.kaibab.org/geology/contdrft.htm
Visualize the present day seafloor spreading; maps from NOAA:
www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/announcements/images_predict.HTML
Database of Earth Impact Structures maintained by the Planetary and Space Science Center of the University of New Brunswick Canada:
www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/index.html
The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has a very nice page on Lunar Exploration in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission to the Moon in 1969:
nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_11_30th.html
The Apollo Program - Links to info on all of the U.S. Moon missions.
nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo.html
The site also hosts a fascinating overview of the Soviet Lunar Program:
nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunarussr.html
A recent mission to the moon was the Clementine satellite, a spin-off of the Pentagon's Strategic Defense Initiative [aka: Star Wars]. Clementine provided astronomers and planetary scientists with truly remarkable data on the Moon:
nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/clementine.html
The Lunar Prospector Mission ended on 1999 July 31. After about 18 months of science orbiting the moon at an altitude of 30km, it was crashed into a crater on the moon's south pole in the hopes of vaporizing water ice thought to be hiding in the perpetual shadows. At this writing (1999 Aug 11) the jury is still out. Find out the latest at:
lunar.arc.nasa.gov
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The best Solar System tour in my opinion is Calvin Hamilton's award-winning Views of the Solar System. This is a great general web-based exploration of the solar system, beautifully illustrated with pictures and well-written text (but, sadly, the site is now marred by annoying flashy ads).
www.solarviews.com/eng/homepage.htmAlso available in Spanish, Portuguese, German, & French versions:
Spanish: www.solarviews.com/span/homepage.htm
Portuguese: www.solarviews.com/portug/homepage.htm
German: www.solarviews.com/germ/homepage.htm
French:www.solarviews.com/french/homepage.htm
Also not to be missed is Welcome to the Planets(tm), the web version of a beautiful CD-ROM put out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. Also info on how to get the CD-ROM.
pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets
The USGS Flagstaff Field Center maintains a novel graphical Solar System Browser, in which you select objects from a graphic representation of the bodies of the solar system. The picture is a computer version of a large wall poster, entitled Mapping the Solar System. For slow networks or browsers that don't support clickable image maps, a text-based browser is also available. I give both links below. The maps of the planets put together by USGS are superb:
Image-Map: astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/BrowseTheSolarSystem
Text-Based: astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/BrowseTheSolarSystem/wall_txt.html
Also check out their other resources at the main webpage for the Astrogeology Research Program
astrogeology.usgs.gov
Bill Arnett's The Nine Planets is a hypertext essay on the Solar System, brought to you courtesy of the University of Arizona chapter of SEDS:
seds.lpl.arizona.edu/billa/tnp/nineplanets.htmlSoon probably changing its name to "The Eight Planets"...
www.planetary.org
They have a really nice "what's new" page for space exploration news:
www.planetary.org/html/what-is-new.html
Also founded in 1980, SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space) is an independent, student-based organization dedicated to promoting the current and future exploration and development of space. They've been into the Web since the beginning, and are a good starting point for lots of space information and links.
seds.lpl.arizona.edu
www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions
messenger.jhuapl.edu
www.jpl.nasa.gov/magellan
marsweb.jpl.nasa.govThis page gives lots of mirror sites around the world (to take the load off the JPL web server which took over 100 Million hits in one day at the height of the recent Pathfinder mission!)
The Mars Global Surveyor was launched on 7 November 1996, and went into orbit around Mars in 12 September 1997. Between September 1997 and March 1998, the Global Surveyor made a series of aerobreaking passes through the top of the Martian atmosphere to slowly bring it into a circular orbit. It has since been mapping the entire surface of Mars with the "Mars Orbiter Camera" or MOC at unprecedented resolution. The MOC images are nothing short of spectacular, To find out the current mission status, and view the latest pictures, visit the Mars Global Surveyor web page at JPL:
mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs
I can't resist, but one early result of MOC was to get the best images yet of the infamous "Face on Mars" feature in the Cydonia Region. To get the full scoop, visit
mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/4_6_face_release/index.htmlOr, you can skip all the technical stuff and go right to the punchline:
mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/4_6_face_release/compare.gif (415Kb)The phenomenally successful Mars Pathfinder was launched in 1996 December. The Pathfinder lander and Sojourner Rover landed in the Ares Vallis region of Mars on 1997 July 2. Renamed the "Sagan Memorial Station", the formal mission ended on 1997 August 23, but there is still lots of information online:
mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/default.html
For those of you with a JAVA-enabled browser, here is a very cool interactive panorama of the Martian surface at the Pathfinder landing site, courtesy of the Flagstaff USGS Office:
astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/MarsPathfinder/GalleryBr.html
An on-line Atlas of Mars from the AI projects group at the NASA Ames Research Center. Causal users should check ou the "Virtual Spacecraft" Link. Very Cool.
ic-www.arc.nasa.gov/ic/projects/bayes-group/Atlas/Mars
galileo.jpl.nasa.gov
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
pluto.jhuapl.edu
skytonight.com/observing/objects/comets
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Geoff Marcy
exoplanets.org
The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia by Jean Schneider of the Observatoire de Paris gives a very nice overview of the search for Extrasolar Planets:
exoplanet.eu
SETI stands for [The] Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Coined in the 1960's, SETI is a particular framework that has evolved in which various people are searching for artificial electromagnetic signals from technologically-advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. Discussion of SETI runs the gamut from the deeply skeptical to the ardently hopeful (scientifically, that is, there is a subset of the frankly dotty, but we won't go there). It is a subject that has nothing whatever to do with UFOs (which is the only time you'll see that word mentioned on these pages!). Below is a very select set of links to discussions of the question of SETI. These are meant as gateways to explorating this topic, and is not an exhaustive overview.
The SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, is a professional organization conducting scientific research on the question of Life in the Universe, with particular attention to the searching for electromagnetic evidence of technological life. I think that this is the best SETI page on the Web for those looking for a good, general, no-nonsense source of information:
www.seti.org
The Planetary Society also maintains a site dedicated to the SETI project:
seti.planetary.org
The SETI League, Inc., not to be confused with the SETI Institute (see above), is a non-profit, member-supported educational and scientific organization pursuing SETI projects. One of their primary and unique activities is to organize a network of amateur radio astronomers into a world-wide search, including technical specs for building receivers and related equipment.
www.setileague.org
Last, but not least, the folks at Sky & Telescope Magazine have put together a very nice and uptodate page on many current SETI topics. New and definitely worth a look:
skytonight.com/resources/seti(Thanks to Alan MacRobert, Sr. editor at Sky & Telescope, for the recommendation - I'd overlooked this link in the past).
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