Titania by John Simmons

Astronomy Links

My friend Melissa claims that I always send her the coolest astronomy links and thought that I should collect them into a webpage.  I'm suspicous, though, that she's just lost all of those links and was too embarassed to ask for them again.

Fun Stuff

• A great exhibit of Celestial Atlases
• Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy - Plait points out the bad astronomy in the movies, tv and news.
• Annals of Improbable Research - Odd research articles written convincingly in a scientific style.  Very fun to read some of them!
• So you want to be an astronomer? - This is a great java-based game to show you just exactly what life is like for a typical astronomer.

Current Sky Events

• Your Sky - This site will produce a free sky map with constellations and planets for your latitude and longitude for any night.
• Comets and Meteors - This site has lists of comet and meteor activity.
• Eclipse Homepage - Contains a list of lunar and solar eclipses for the next five years.  Also has a catalog of lunar eclipses for the years -1999 (1999 BCE) to 3000 (AD).

News and Current Research

• SpaceScience.com - Space Science News
• Astronomy and Space News at Yahoo!

Public Outreach Pages (Great for learing a thing or two about astronomy)

• Astronomy Picture of the Day
• High Energy Picture of the Week
• Ask a High-Energy Astronomer - If you ask a question during the right week, you just might get an answer from me!
• StarChild: A Learning Center for Young Astronomers
• Imagine The Universe! - General astronomy and high energy astrophysics for ages 14 through adult.

Publications for General Audiences

• Sky and Telescope Magazine

Resources

• Eric's Science Treasure Troves - I mostly use the physics and astronomy treasure troves.  These troves offer definitions, equations and explainations of various science terms/phenomena.  Unfortunately, the math treasure trove has been shut down for the time being (blame CRC).
• Stellar Magnitude Scale
• HEASARC Web Utilities
• Moon Phases
• Julian Date Converter

Select High Energy Astronomy Mission Homepages

• Chandra
• Swift - This is a mutliwavelength gamma-ray burst mission to be launched in 2003 (and if you didn't understand that, don't worry, they have public outreach pages which explain the mission for non-technical types).
• GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope) - Scheduled for launch in 2006
• CGRO (Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory) - One of NASA's "Great Observatories", deorbited in June 2000
• EXIST (Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope)
• HETE-2 (The High Energy Transient Explorer 2)
• MAXIM (MicroArcsecond X-ray Imaging Mission)
• INTETRAL
• Microcalorimeter Research (eventually to go on ASTRO-E2) - This group is developing microcalorimeters to be used for X-ray astronomy mission, specifically ASTRO-E 2 and Constellation-X.  I worked with them during my two and a half years as a graduate student.

NASA Links

• NASA
• Goddard Space Flight Center
• Kennedy Space Center Home Page
• Space Shuttle Launch Schedule
• HEASARC (High Energy Astrophysics Science and Research Center) - They have some great outreach pages to explain high energy astronomical phenomena.

Publications and Data Bases for Professionals

• The Woman Astronomer
• Science Magazine Home
• The Astrophysical Journal Online - You'll need to connect from a site with a subscription to read the artcles, but I find this more convenient than finding a copy of the paper edition.
•  LANL e-print archive - e-prints of pretty much every article that is submitted to physics and astronomy journals and for conference proceedings are archived here.
•  NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) - A searchable database of astrophysics-related abstracts and articles.
•  NASA Extragalactic Database (NED) - Here you can look up positions, magnitudes, maps and articles about any extragalactic source.

Clubs and Institutions

• New Mexico Tech's Astronomy Club - and the astronomy club at my alma mater.  Tech's astronomy club hosts a star party, the Enchanted Skies Star Party, each fall.
• American Astronomical Society
• AAS Committee on the Status of Women
• The Astrophyisical Society of the Pacific
• Project ASTRO - A public outreach project pairing astronomers with school teachers.

Created: 05 September 2001
Updated: 01 November 2001