Ast 1040 Useful Links
Below are a collection of links mentioned in a previous semester's lectures. As we cover our own material this semester, this will get updated. For now, you might find these an interesting preview.
Generally Useful Links:
UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program) with the Physics Dept.
HEASARC - High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center, home of the High Energy Astrophysics Picture of the Week.
Earth Observatory – lots of cool pictures of Earth from space.
Sky and Telescope Magazine.
Astronomy Magazine.
Windows to the Universe site - gobs of astronomical information.
The Universe Today – space and astronomy news.
Solarviews.com – a lot of good, up to date solar system info.
FAQs on naming stars from the IAU.
The great Bad Astronomy Blog.
Links mentioned in Lectures:
Powers of 10 demonstration (in java).
All the Constellations and their Boundaries (but not the stars or lines)
a much better constellation page, with gobs of info and star charts.
3D Universe, seeing things from other perspectives.
Projected changes in some constellations over time.
The sky tonight, and the moon phase.
See all five naked-eye planets at the same time, Jan/Feb 2016.
A good interactive moon phase animation.
Animation showing why the ecliptic is tilted wrt the equator.
Late January, early February: see all five other naked eye planets in the morning sky at once!
The schedule of upcoming eclipses.
Lots of eclipse information, including good primers on solar and lunar eclipses.
Dates where the sun is at a given date, and what that means for the zodiac.
All sorts of good java animations and simulations for planetary motions.
The Galileo Project, a hyperlinked biography.
Many mathematician's biographies, which includes many early astronomers.
Isaac Newton and alchemy.
A java solar system, and bunch of solar system animations.
Orbit animations.
A java virtual experiment to show the Doppler effect.
A good article on what might have happened to Mars' water
Two ideas for Venus probes: a clockwork one, and a flying one.
A National Geographic Cassini Grand Tour website, 3D rendering of all the orbits.
A wikipedia page with a good overview of Planet 9 (or not).
Rings found around dwarf planet Haumea
A neat claymation video explaining pretty much all of the chapter about meteors, asteroids, and comets
Looking for planets, finding Dysonspheres?
Why Does the Sun Shine by They Might Be Giants.
Some good information about the structure of the sun.
The Really Big Solar Flare of 2 April 2001.
The Really Big Solar Flare of 29 October 2003, also look at SOHO and Spaceweather.
The SOHO mission home page.
The current space weather.
Light speed and distances.
A good xkcd comic about light from the stars.
Binary star animations.
A new solar observatory makes some great new Sun pictures.
A fantastic set of deep-sky photos, including this wonderful composite of the Orion Region.
A Kahn Academy course on the life and death of stars. We've covering the same thing, so seeing a different class' take on the same topic could be helpful.
A funny take on the superball+basketball bounce demo
LIGO - and their discovery of gravitational waves
A baby black hole is found (and explained).
Two good youtube videos on black holes: what if you put one in your pocket, and how we get them from stars.
Giant gamma ray bubbles discovered in our galaxy.
Special Relativity simplified, or at another place.
Where cosmic rays come from.
Dark Matter as explained by the CDMS people.
An online Drake Equation Calculator.
Most likely places for life in the Milky Way.
Those same calculations can come up without a lot of other earths.