links - astronomy

Telescope Building Instructions

• Sidewalk Astronomy build your own telescope plan
• NASA Telescopes in Education build your own telescope plans
• Alternative telescope building plans

Lesson Ideas

• MaryKay Hemenway's optic activities
• Telescope Technology for teachers (McDonald Observatory)
• PBI class astronomy link pile
  This website is an organized listing of links that will hopefully be useful to the people doing the astronomy project. -- Eric Hooper
• Mirror Mirror Lesson (StarDate)

Data Sources

• Canadian Astronomical Data Centre
• National Space Science Data Center
  The National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) provides access to a wide variety of astrophysics, space physics, solar physics, lunar and planetary data from NASA space flight missions, in addition to selected other data and some models and software.
• Astronomy Digital Image Library
  The purpose of the Astronomy Digital Image Library (ADIL) is to collect astronomical, research-quality images and make them available to the astronomical community and the general public. Patrons access the Library through the World Wide Web to search for and browse images. Once images are located in the Library, users may download them to their local machines in FITS format for further analysis.

Remotely operated telescope

• MicroObservatory Project
  MicroObservatory is a network of five automated telescopes that can be controlled over the Internet.
• Telescopes in Education

Background info on Telescopes

• How Stuff Works
  How telescopes work, how to view different objects (sun, moon, planets, stars, etc.,), Safety issues and more.

Spectroscopy

• How to Build a Spectroscope (Exploratorium)
• How to Build a Spectroscope (NASA)
• Build and Use Spectroscope Lesson (StarDate)
• Build and Use Spectroscope Lesson (Stanford)
• How to Build a CD Spectroscope
• Visible Light Spectra Activities
• Applet of how a meter stick spectroscope works (with math equations for different wavelengths)
• Spectroscopy Linkpile
  Background info, catalogs of spectra, and java applets

Astronomy Images

• General picture piles.
  • Bill Keel's gif farm.
  • Anglo-Australian Observatory picture index.
  • NASA's Skyview for images of sky at many wavelengths.
  • The Digital Sky Survey (any region of sky).
• Annotated picture piles.
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day.
  • Students for the Exploration & Development of Space main index page.
  • NASA's photo gallery .
  • Hubble Space Telescope Heritage Project.
  • Chandra X-ray Telsecope public info & outreach.
• Movies and animations.
• Hubble Space Telescope animations.
• A NASA general animation pile.
• Indiana University's movie page, including simulations.
• Movies, simulations & demos from University of British Columbia.
• Simulations of relativistic motion.

Ground-based Observatories.

• The University of Texas' McDonald Observatory , one of the largest, most fabled, and among the older university observatories in the world. Strong emphasis on education & outreach.
• The U.S. National Optical (i.e., visible light) Astronomy Observatory, with telescopes in Arizona, Hawaii, & Chile.
• The European Southern Observatory in Chile, their "national" visible light observatory.
• The U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Not all observatories look in visible light!
• Some observatories don't even look at light and are buried in mines!
• There are observatories under construction to detect gravity waves, rather than light waves.

Space-based Observatories.

These are also space missions, but are separated because they are specifically observatories.

• Hubble Space Telescope, the most famous. It's successor is currently being designed.
• Chandra is as revolutionary as Hubble, but for X-ray light.
• Spitzer is the next generation of infrared telescopes, to be launched this coming January.
• Telescopes to look at the cosmic background radiation left over after the Big Bang:CMB and MAP.

Space missions

Mostly planetary probes. Again, there are far more than listed here.

• Inner solar system.
  • Discovery missions, the "faster, better, cheaper" spacecraft.
  • Mars missions.
  • Soviet Venera probes to Venus.
• Outer solar system.
  • Voyager, one of the most important space missions launched.
  • The venerable Pioneer spacecraft.
• Sci-fi come to life. This is just too cool: an ion drive spacecraft just roaming the solar system.
• Human space flight.
  • Apollo missions to the moon.
  • The Space Shuttle.
  • The International Space Station or www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html.

Education/Advocacy Groups

• National/international Education and/or Advocacy.
• Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
• The Planetary Society. Space Station.
• Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.
• American Association of Variable Star Observers.
• Planetaria & Centers
• McDonald Observatory site & visitor center.
• List of planetaria.
• Stephen F. Austin SU planetarium in Nacogdoches.
• Adler Planetarium in Chicago.
• Hayden Planetarium in NYC.
• Johnson Space Center in Houston.
• Challenger Center near DC.
• Amateur groups & clubs.
• Austin Astronomical Society, including some Austin astronomy resources and getting started in astronomy and other TX amateur groups.
• Listing of amateur clubs.
• Texas Star Party.

Educational Resources

• Lesson plans, demos, activities.
  • Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Science Education Department, with both materials and education research.
  • CSUN's pile of projects & lessons, including astronomy.
    • An internet-based course.
    • Mid-continent Research for Education & Learning lesson plans, links, etc. from a variety of sources.
    • Library in the Sky, with lots of links to astronomy materials.
  • GA Tech's links for K-12.
  • Project ASTRO, another way to get a pet astronomer.
  • The Sun Gun, a hardware-store solar telescope good for group viewing.
• Glossaries & dictionaries.
• Many large project pages (e.g., NASA) have internal glossaries related to the topic.
• Stardate's fairly extensive glossary.
• Zoom Astronomy's glossary with pictures.
• A small Univ. VA glossary.
• Astronomy Info's glossary.
• A CfA glossary, somewhat specific to comets.

Astronomy Literature

• Popular magazines.
• Astronomy Magazine.
• Sky & Telescope magazine.
• Mercury magazine by Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
• Stardate by UT's McDonald Observatory.
• Starstuff, an online magazine created by a UT Austin astronomy grad which showcases popular articles written by professional astronomers.
• Astronomy Now, a British magazine.
• Planetary Report, the member magazine for the Planetary Society.
• Bibliography search.
• The Astrophysics Data System, a very comprehensive listing of astronomy literature, mostly research.

Finding Info on Individual Objects

These will probably only be useful if you get pretty heavily into an astronomy project.

• NASA Extragalactic Database.
• SIMBAD, for all objects outside of the solar system.
• NASA high-energy data (UV, X-rays, gamma rays) site.
• Multimission astronomy data archive.

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