External Resources
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Interested in learning more about astronomy? Lean into your curiosity through these resources! Read about today's astronomy news, look through stellar photography, or engage with your local astronomical community.
General Interest
- Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Hubble Space Telescope Photography
- Bill Arnett's "The Nine Planets"
- SkyView: The Internet's Virtual Telescope
Astronomy in West Michigan
- Grand Rapids Amateur Astronomical Association
- Kalamazoo Astronomical Society
- Muskegon Astronomical Society
- Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium
Astronomy News
Educational
More Links
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Topical Links
The Solar System:
- Orbits:
- Horizons, JPL's On-Line Solar System Data and Ephemeris Computation Service: "Any Body--Anytime"
- Astronomy Workshop (for PCs only)
- Satellite Tracking Tool (PCs only)
- The Botjes Planetarium
- JPL's Solar System Dynamics
- FIND_ORB, free PC orbit determination software from Project Pluto
- The Sun:
- Currently active spacecraft
- SOHO: The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
- Realtime SOHO images of the Sun
- HINODE (Japanese solar satellite)
- STEREO
- Currently active spacecraft
- Solar Data Analysis Center
- Sunspot cycle (MSFC)
- Analemma tutorial and web tool
- Space Weather: Science news and information about the Sun-Earth environment
- Mercury:
- Mercury orbiter: Messenger (2011-2015)
- NASA's Mercury home page
- Venus Orbiters:
- NASA's VenusMagellan (1990-1994)
- ESA's Venus Express (2006-2015)
- JAXAs Akatsuki (2016-now)
- Earth and Moon:
- Continents and crust
- Earth Impact Data Base (John Spray, U.NB)
- Continents and crust
- Oceans and Atmosphere
- Ocean tides: Ocean tide predictions | Xtide
- Recent sea surface temperatures
- Sea surface temperature analysis
- Global climate change links
- Animations of current wind and temperature conditions (Note the menu in the lower left.)
- Magnetosphere (Aurorae)
- IMAGE: Imager for Magnetopause to Aurora Global Exploration
- Space Weather: Science news and information about the Sun-Earth environment
- Artificial Satellites:
- Earth's Moon:
- Eclipses: past, present, and future
- Rise and set times for the sun and moon (from the US Naval Observatory)
- Lunar phase predictions
- Spacecraft: LCROSS (impact Oct. 9, 2009)
- The Full Moon Atlas
- Selene/Kaguya: Japanese Lunar Orbiter
- Miscellaneous
- American Meteor Society
- Light pollution: International Dark Sky Association
- Mars:
- Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Rover (Landed August 2012)
- Phoenix Polar Lander (operational May 2008 - May 2010)
- Exploration Rover: Spirit (operational January 2004 - March 2010)
- Global Surveyor
- Mars Global Surveyor Camera: JPL | Malin SSS |
- MGS Thermal Emission Spectrometer (check out the dust storm movie!)
- Mars Curiosity Rover (2012 until now)
- Mars Viewer 2.0
- Asteroids:
- IAU: Minor Planet Center
- Asteroid Groups by Petr Scheirich (beautiful images and animations of orbital elements)
- Description of the System of Asteroids by Gerard Faure
- Asteroids - Dynamic Site
- Asteroids with Satellites
- Asteroid Colors (from the SDSS)
- Minor Planet section of ALPO
- MPML: a list for asteroid and comet researchers
- Light Curves:
- Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link (CALL)
- M. Kaasalainen's asteroid model references
- Database of Asteroid Models from Inversion Techniques (DAMIT)
- Light Curve Inversion software from MPO
- Near Earth Objects (NEOs)
- NASA
- Orbit animations
- Automated searches: LINEAR | Spacewatch
- Hohmann Transfer
- Spin vectors tabulated by the Poznan Observatory
- Spacecraft encounters with asteroids:
- OSIRIS-REx sample return mission to 101955 Bennu (encounter 2019-2020)
- Dawn orbit of 4 Vesta (7/11-7/12) and 1 Ceres (2/15-7/15)
- Rosetta flyby of 2867 Steins (9/5/08) and 21 Lutetia (7/10/2010)
- Hayabusa sample return 25143 Itokawa (Nov. 2005)
- Stardust flyby of 5535 Annefrank (11/2/2002)
- Deep Space 1 flyby of 9969 Braille (7/29/1999)
- NEAR Shoemaker touchdown on (433) Eros (2/12/2001)
- NEAR Shoemaker flyby of 253 Mathilde (6/27/1997)
- Galileo flyby of 951 Gaspra (10/29/1991) and 243 Ida (8/28/1993)
- Jupiter:
- Saturn:
- Uranus:
- Neptune:
- Pluto and Trans-Neptunian Objects:
- New Horizons spacecraft (July 14, 2015 flyby)
- Occultations: 18 March 2007; 25 August 2008
- Current plot of the Outer Solar System
- Comets:
- Comets (from Sky & Telescope Magazine)
- Spacecraft encounters:
- Halley's Comet (1P/Halley): Giotto (3/13/1986)
- Comet Borrelly (19P/Borrelly): Deep Space 1 (9/22/2001)
- Comet Wild 2 (81P/Wild): Stardust (1/2/2004)
- Comet Tempel 1 (9P/Tempel):
- Comet Hartley 2 (103P/Hartley): EPOXI (11/4/2010)
- Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P): Rosetta (May 2014)
Extrasolar Planets:
- The extrasolar planets encyclopedia
- Pulsar planets: Penn State
Stars:
- Aladin Lite
- All Sky Automated Survey
- Black holes FAQ
- The Catalina Surveys Data Release 2
- Eclipsing Binary Predictions (by J. M. Kreiner)
- GAIA Data Release 2 (Parallaxes and proper motions of 1.3 billion stars)
- Harvard Plate Stacks
- OGLE
- Pulsars: Introduction | Sounds
- Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)
- Skydot: Sky database for objects in Time-Domain (includes NSVS)
- Variable Star Index of the AAVSO
- X-ray stars: XTE Monitoring Project
- Astrometry:
- Hipparcos astrometry satellite
- Where is that star? Positions, motions, and brightnesses of over a billion objects from the USNO B1.0 catalog.
- Spectroscopy:
- Nebula and Galaxies:
- The Caldwell catalog (SEDS)
- The Messier Catalog
- Finest NGC objects: by Alan Dyer, by the Saguara Astronomy Club
- List of bright quasars
- Cosmology:
- Physics:
- Timekeeping:
- Definitions of astronomical time systems
- Barycentric Julian Date (Jason Eastman, 2010)
- Various time systems (Rick Fisher, NRAO, 1996)
- Online conversion utilities
- UTC to BJD (coordinated universal time to barycentric dynamic time)
- BJD to UTC
- Telescopes, NASA's Great Observatories:
- Orbits:
- Popular Magazines
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Educational (including textbooks)
- Animations:
- Astronomy Education Review
- Bad Astronomy according to Philip Plait
- The Botjes Planetarium
- Hubble's Law
- NASA homepage
- National Air and Space Museum
- Stardial sky camera
- Windows to the Universe
- OK Go in an accelerated reference frame
- Textbooks:
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Institutions
- American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
- American Astronomical Society (AAS)
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
- Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO)
- La Silla all sky camera
- Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI)
- Michigan Space Grant Consortium (MSGC)
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)
- National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Society for Astronomical Sciences (SAS)
- Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
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Academic Resources
Journals
- Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service
- Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
- Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics
- arXiv astrophysics preprint service
- Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series
- Astrophysical Journal
- Astrophysical Journal Supplement
- Astrophysical Journal Letters
- IAU Circulars
- Icarus
- Journal of the British Astronomical Association
- Minor Planet Bulletin
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Nature
- New Astronomy
- Physics Today
- Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
- Science
- Science News
Data Archives
- Asteroid Data Sets (from PDS Small Bodies Node)
- Astronomical Data Center
- CASTLES Gravitational Lens Database
- Horizons, JPL's On-Line Solar System Data and Ephemeris Computation Service (Any Body - Anytime)
- IRAS
- NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED)
- National Virtual Observatory
- Planetary Rings Node
- SIMBAD Astronomical Database
- SkyView, a virtual observatory from HEASARC
- VizieR catalog server
- VLA Archive Database
- Web resources:
- AstroWeb (the most complete list of astronomical links available)
- Calendar of Academic Conferences
- Julian date conversion: into JD; into calendar date
- Phoebe : PHysics Of Eclipsing BinariEs
- PERANSO (time series analysis software)
- StarHeads, Strasbourg listing of astronomical Web resources
- News group: sci.astro.research
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Commercial Products
- Apogee Instruments, Inc. (CCD Cameras, etc.)
- ASCOM (Astronomy software standards [no cost])
- Ash Manufacturing Company (Observatory domes, etc.)
- Astronomical Society of the Pacific (posters, T-shirts, books, etc.)
- Binary Maker 3.0 (simulation of binary star light curves)
- CCDWare (CCD Inspector: telescope collimation software)
- Celestron (Telescopes, accessories)
- DC-3 Dreams (Astronomy control and analysis software)
- DFM Engineering, Inc. (research telescopes)
- Diffraction Limited (Maxim CCD software)
- Greenlazer (green lasers for pointing out stars)
- Jim's Mobile, Inc. (JMI) (Telescope Products: cases, focusers, etc.)
- Learning Technologies, Inc. (Educational equipment from Project STAR)
- Lumicon (Filters, etc.)
- Meade (Telescopes, accessories)
- Minor Planet Observer (data analysis software and books)
- Observa-dome Labs., Inc. (Observatory domes, etc.)
- Optec, Inc. (Filter wheels, telecompressors, temperature controlled focusers.)
- Optical Guidance Systems (research telescopes)
- Orion (telescopes, binoculars, accessories)
- RegiStax (free image processing software)
- Santa Barbara Instrument Group (CCD Cameras, etc.)
- Sky & Telescope (publications, posters, etc.)
- Software Bisque (Astronomy software; robotic telescope mounts)
- Technical Innovations (Domes)
- Tele Vue Optics, Inc. (Telescopes, eyepieces, etc.)
- Van Slyke Engineering (Telescope accessories, versaport sliders)
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Miscellaneous
History:
- Benjamin Banneker
- John Goodricke
- Working Group for the History of Astronomy
- High Energy Astrophysics
- MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive (includes biographies of early astronomers and descriptions of mathematical astronomy)
- NASA Solar System Exploration
- The Nobel foundation
Astronomy Clubs:
Women: