Astronomy Links

Far and away the finest piece of astronomy software available at any price...and the price on this one is absolutely free! You can travel to all the planets and moons of our solar system as well as "warp" thousands of light years across our side of the galaxy to visit other stars. You can see eclipses, Earth satellites, star and constellation names, and planetary orbits. Your viewpoint is wherever you choose to be. This is doubtless the best of the best.

Phil Plait, an astronomer/skeptic has as his goal the debunking of unscientific claims that are presented to the public as "truths". Most of these claims, when analyzed under the lens of Phil's logic fall right apart. He is an astute author, ("Bad Astronomy") with a good sense of humor and is very real.

This is an editable graphical based database of information on the planets and many thousands of stars. Here, by clicking on an object you will get detailed Right Ascension and Declination coordinates, magnitudes, proper motions, proper names, Bayer names, Flamsteed names, user uploaded images, and some very in-depth technical articles abotut the selected object. You can zoom in on an area surrounding your selection and see in greater detail its neighbors. This is a worthwhile site when you need more than the regular media level detail about an astronomical object.

Yes, there is weather in space and events on Earth caused by phenomena in space. This page has a wealth of data on the Sun, solar flares, solar wind, solar prominences, aurora, Near-Earth asteroids, and geomagnetic storm forecasts. It has daily pictures from several solar satellites as well as user supplied images.

This is an ephemerides generator. It gives in excruciating detail information on the Sun, Moon and planetary bodies. Besides ephemerides, here you will find diameters, masses, volumes, sidereal periods, temperatures, pressures, gravity, and much more. But a very important and useful tool here is the ephmerides generator itself. This gives exact hourly positions of the selected object in Right Ascension and Declination as well as its apparent magnitude. This level of detail is not for everyone. But if you need it, this is the source you can count on for accuracy.

Similar to some of the other links here, this is a site that has a detailed database of its subject material. This one looks at all the 110 Messier objects, has some nice images and a lot of detailed infomation about those objects. It is a work in progress, so it states, but there is much material here if you want to learn about the Messier Catalog of beautiful astronomical objects.

On a bit lighter note, this is a site that offers a number of astronomical images, each scaled about 10 times the previous one. These guide the viewer and allow them to begin to comprehend the size of the Universe and just how small and isolated the Sun and Earth really are. It is eye-opening even for someone knowledgeable about the cosmos.

And here is astronoomical science presented in a form that the common man can appreciate. It is a site with a good balance of images and moderate technical discussion that most anyone will enjoy getting their dose of astronomy from.

Here are a number of mainly amatuer photographs of celestial and astronomical subject material, but are a class above what you normally see. Well done and imaginative, these images are worth visiting the site to experience them.

A simple single page reference. It is here because it has a nicely color-coded map of light and darkness all around the globe, updated each 15 minutes. Tim Osborne, whose page it is, has also put a red star on the map to indicate the exact postion in the world where the sun is directly overhead.