Six Things Everyone Should Know About Astronomy
(With Activities)
1. The Organization of the Universe
Powers of 10 Web “Movie”:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
Toilet Paper Solar System
Football Field Solar System
Sun
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto
Comets
(miles)
Alpha Cen
(miles)
AU
0
0.387
0.723
1
1.52
5.2
9.54
19.19
30.06
39.53
50,000
264,600
Yards
0.00
1.00
1.87
2.58
3.93
13.44
24.65
49.59
77.67
102.14
129,199
73.41
683,721
388.48
2. Why the Earth has Seasons
Bicycle Wheel Demonstration
3. Why the Moon has Phases
Motions Activity
Lunar Phases Simulation:
http://astro.unl.edu/naap/lps/lps.html
4. How We Learn about the World through Light
Light spectra
Incandescent Blackbody
Spectral Lines
Scattering (Chalk dust, powdered milk)
Polarization
5. How Stars Work
Random walk out of sun
Project CLEA Simulation
6. How Stars are Born, Live and Die
Planetarium Software
(Stellarium, Celestia)
Image Analysis/Data Centers/Online Journals
(Aladin, Simbad, ARXIV)
Micrometeorites
Six Things Everyone Should Know About Astronomy
(With Activities)
1. The Organization of the Universe
Powers of 10 Web “Movie”:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
Toilet Paper Solar System
Football Field Solar System
AU
Sun
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto
Comets
(miles)
Alpha Cen
(miles)
Feet
0
0.387
0.723
1
1.52
5.2
9.54
19.19
30.06
39.53
50000
264600
0.00
1.00
1.87
2.58
3.93
13.44
24.65
49.59
77.67
102.14
129198.97
24.47
683720.93
129.49
Yards
0.00
1.00
1.87
2.58
3.93
13.44
24.65
49.59
77.67
102.14
129198.97
73.41
683720.93
388.48
2. Why the Earth has Seasons
Bicycle Wheel Demonstration
3. Why the Moon has Phases
Motions Activity
Lunar Phases Simulation: http://astro.unl.edu/naap/lps/lps.html
4. How We Learn about the World through Light
Light spectra
Incandescent Blackbody
Spectral Lines
Scattering (Chalk dust, powdered milk)
Polarization
5. How Stars Work
Random walk out of sun
Project CLEA Simulation
6. How Stars are Born, Live and Die
Planetarium Software
(Stellarium, Celestia)
Image Analysis/Data Centers/Online Journals
(Aladin, Simbad, ARXIV)
Micrometeorites
Astronomy Resources on the Web
Astronomy / Physics Organizations
• http://www.iau.org/
• http://www.aas.org/
• http://astrosociety.org/
• http://www.aps.org/
• http://www.physicscentral.com/
General Information
• http://www.nineplanets.org/
system
• http://astro.nineplanets.org/
• http://www.windows.ucar.edu/
• http://moon.google.com/
• http://www.google.com/mars/
International Astronomical Union
American Astronomical Society
Astronomical Society of the Pacific
American Physical Society
American Physical Society General Interest Page (Nice Links)
The Nine Planets – everything you want to know about the solar
Links to Software, Telescopes and other astronomy info
Windows to the Universe – Good information, some activities
Go to images of any point on the Moon
Go to images of any point on Mars
Astronomy Education
• http://education.nasa.gov/index.html
• http://teachspacescience.stsci.edu/
• http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/Segway/
• http://astro.unl.edu/naap/splash/
NASA’s main Education Program
A clearing house and search site
NASA’s Science Education Gateway
Nebraska Astronomy Applet Project
Comprehensive Commercial Sites
• http://www.skypub.com/
• http://space.com/
• http://www.universetoday.com/
• http://astronomywebguide.com/
Daily Astronomy news, features and links
Daily news, products, images
News and info about astronomy
Good set of links to astronomy resources
Sky Maps and other Simulators
• http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/
ImageJ is a viewer & analyzer for many formats, from
NIH
• http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/ds9/
DS9 is a viewer for FITS format images
• http://www.stellarium.org/
Stellarium is a beautiful free sky stimulator
• http://www.shatters.net/celestia/index.html A powerful solar system simulator
• http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/
Add-ons and accessories for Celestia
• http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
From NASA, lets you zoom into any point on Earth – in
3-D
• http://www.gettysburg.edu/academics/physics/clea/CLEAhome.html
From Gettysburg College, Windows Simulations for
Astronomy
Journals
• http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html
The NASA/Smithsonian Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service. Provides abstracts and
many full-texts of astronomy research articles.
• http://www.arxiv.org/
Cornell University Library’s searchable database of full-print articles from many physics and
astronomy journals.
Astronomy Pictures
• http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Astronomy Picture of the day
• http://www.nasa.gov/gallery/index.html
NASA Clearinghouse for many image and video sites
• http://nix.nasa.gov/
NASA Image Exchange – Searchable database of over 300,000 NASA images and multimedia
• http://hubblesite.org/gallery/
Hubble Space Telescope Gallery of Images
• http://www.aao.gov.au/images.html/
Anglo-Australian Observatory Image
• http://www.noao.edu/noaosci.html
National Optical Astronomy Observatories
• http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/multimedia/index.html
Johnson Space Flight Center's images and movies from each lunar mission
• http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm
Jet Propulsion Lab’s site, with many images and activities
• http://samadhi.jpl.nasa.gov/
A NASA "Space Visualization" project; see the Solar System Simulator
Data
• http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/astro.image.html
Links to data and image sites
• http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/sim-fid.pl
Simbad – returns measurements and links to any object
• http://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Generates images of any part of the sky at any
wavelength
• http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/astroweb.html
Astroweb -- lists of data, image, education sites
• http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/
Aladin Sky Atlas – powerful access to images and
analysis
• http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/
National Space Science Data System (Also good
images)
• http://riemann.usno.navy.mil/AA/data/
US Naval Observatory's Data about position and time
Multimedia
• http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
Powers of 10
Note: NASA images without the NASA emblem are not copywritten and may be used freely