General Astronomy Links

This page contains links to web sites that I have found interesting and useful. The list is not meant to be comprehensive. Rather it is intended to be a starting point for exploring a particular astronomical subject on the web. New sites are being added sporadically so check back occasionally.

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Sky

• What's up in the Sky --- Sky and Telescope web page on the sky this month.
  
• The Constellations --- all kinds of information relating to the 88 mythical constellations and lots of data on many of the stars themselves.
  

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Solar System: Comets

• Hal Weaver's home page --- Hal Weaver does lots of intersting research on comets at Johns Hopkins University.
  
• Make a comet --- recipe for making a comet from dry ice, water, dirt, ...
  
• Cometography --- currently visible comets and comets of the past; part of a four volume book chronicling all comets in recorded history.
  

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Solar System: Eclipses

• Espenak's Eclipse Home Page --- The Eclipse Home Page at the NASA/GSFC Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum.
• Solar Eclipse: Stories from the Path of Totality --- The San Fransisco Exploratorium's solar eclipse page, including a live webcast of the June 21, 2001 solar eclipse from Lusaka, Zambia.

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Solar System: Planets

• NASA's Planetary Photojournal --- Access to the publicly released images from various Solar System exploration programs.
  
• Voyager Project Home Page --- Home page for the mission of the two Voyager spacecraft including a summary of the science, both complete and ongoing.

Stars

• The Classification of Stellar Spectra --- good discussion of the stellar classification system.
  
• Stellar Spectral Types: OBAFGKM --- color image of 13 spectra from the Jacoby,Hunter and Christian (1984) spectral atlas.
  
• Spectral Types of Stars --- cool java applet that plots spectra of stars and a blackbody.
  

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Galaxies

• The Arp atlas on-line --- On-line version of H. C. Arp's atlas of peculiar galaxies. Also the Arp-Madore Catalog of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations.
  
• The starburst galaxy NGC 1512 --- Hubble Space Telescope press release about multicolor observations of a galaxy with a beautiful starburst ring.
  

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Cosmology

• The Shapley - Curtis Debate in 1920 Description and published text of the Great Debate on the nature of the spiral nebulae.
  
• Great Debates in Astronomy Series of recent debates similar in scope to the Great Shapley - Curtis Debate of 1920 including the nature of the gamma-ray bursts, the scale of the Universe and the nature of the Universe.
  

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Miscellaneous

• Astronomy Picture of the Day --- Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
• Level 5 --- A Knowledgebase for Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology including review articles and other references maintained at the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database .
• The Messier Catalog --- 18th century astronomer Charles Messier's list of 100 diffuse objects that were not comets, at SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space).
  
• Digital Images of the Sky --- CCD images of astronomical objects including some stunning wide field images of the constellations.
  
• James Schombert's home page --- at the University of Oregon; includes some very nice web classes.
  
• Scientific American's Ask the Experts: Astronomy --- Questions on astronomy answered by experts in the particular subfield; hosted by Scientific American magazine.
  

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