Some Astromical Websites

Some links are probably broken on this page. I will update it as I find the time.

Rutgers Specific

• Public observing nights at the Schommer Observatory (on the roof of Serin) take place on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Thursdays of each month, weather permitting.
• Heavens Above -- see when bright satellites, etc. are passing overhead (preset for our location)
• Rutgers Astronomical Society -- the RU astronomy club; their facebook page is likely more up to date. Meets during public observing nights of the Schommer Observatory and other times.

Astromical Organizations

• International Astronomical Union -- coordinates activities of (mostly) professional astronomers world wide (planet and star names, time, ...)
• American Astronomical Society -- association of (mostly) professional American astronomers; has material on careers in astronomy
• Astronomical Society of the Pacific -- despite the name, a national organization of professional and amateur astronomers.
• United Astronomy Clubs of New Jersey -- umbrella organization of astronomy clubs in New Jersey
• The Planetary Society -- seeks to inspire and involve the world's public in space exploration through advocacy, projects, and education. Emily Lakdawalla's blog posts, among others, contain a lot of information on recent discoveries about the solar system.

Overall Course

• Astronomy Picture of the Day

• space.com -- good, all-around news about space and astronomy
• SKY Online - Sky and Telescope Magazine -- good sections on what's in the sky, astronomical news, comets, and asteroids.
• Astronomy Magazine -- Similar to Sky and Telescope.

Websites on the Sky

• Stellarium -- free planetarium-like software for Mac OS, Windows, or Linux
• Google Sky -- like Google Maps, but looking up
• Celestia -- free space views software for Mac OS, Windows, or Linux
• Antonio Cidadao's Time-lapse Animations. A collection of very nice animations of objects in the sky (the stars, moon, planets, etc.) done by an amateur astronomer.

History of Astronomy

• Eudoxus
• Aristarchus
• Eratosthenes
• Hipparchus
• Claudius Ptolemy
• Nicolaus Copernicus
• Johannes Kepler
• Tycho Brahe
• Galileo Galilei
• Isaac Newton

• An interesting reconstruction of Galileo's discovery of the moons of Jupiter based on a planetarium program.

Some Astronomical Observatories

• National Optical Astronomy Observatories The US national optical observatories.
• The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). Rutgers has a 10% share of this telescope.
• Hubble Space Telescope Many HST images and press releases.
• Chandra X-ray Observatory
• Fermi Gamma-Ray Observatory

Websites on the Exploration of the Solar System

• Views of the Solar System -- Images and information about the solar system.
• Welcome to the Planets -- Images from NASA's planetary exploration program. Both objects and spacecraft.
• SEDS homepage -- Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.
• Chronology of Lunar and Planetary Exploration -- timeline of space missions from 1957 to today.
• NASA Lunar and Planetary Science -- Describes space missions to solar system targets by NASA and other organizations.

• LRO -- The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been orbiting the Moon since 2009, conducting investigations that prepare for future lunar exploration.
• LCROSS -- The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite orbited the moon in 2009 to search for water in permantly shadowed craters at the lunar poles.
• GRAIL -- The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory consisted of two small satelites that orbited the Moon for most of 2012. Accurate tracking mapped the gravitational field of the Moon, which constrains its internal structure.
• Change'e 3 -- A Chinese lunar lander and rover (Yutu), that arrived on the surface in December 2013 and are probably still operating (though the lander's motor and instruments have failed). You can see pictures from the mission at this Planetary Society blog post.

• MESSENGER -- Mercury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging: launced in 2005 and flew by Earth, Venus (twice), Mercury (three times), before orbiting Mercury 2011 - 2015.

• Venus Express -- European Space Agency (ESA) mission to study the atmosphere of Venus. Orbited Venus between 2006 and 2014.
• Akatsuki -- literally "dawn", also known as the Venus Climate Orbiter; a Japanese spacecraft to study the Venusian atmosphere. Failed to achieve orbit around Venus in 2010, but was placed in orbit in 2015 using attitude control thrusters.

• NASA Mars Exploration Page -- Has links to discussions of past, present, and future missions to Mars.
• Opportunity -- The two Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in 2003. Spirit become stuck in a dust-filled crater in 2009, but Opportunity is still operating, having covered about 43.8 km so far. Since 2011 it has been exploring the 22 km diameter Endeavour crater.
• The Road to Endeavour -- A blog following the adventures of the Opportunity rover ("Oppy" to its fans), with lots of images and commentary from a scientifically literate layman. Begun in 2008 as Oppy started started the 20 km trek to Endeavor crater.
• Curiosity -- NASA rover that has been exploring the Martian crater Gale and its central peak Aeolis Mons (Mount Sharp) since 2012, obtaining evidence for flowing water and lakes in the distant past at this site.
• ExoMars 2016 -- ESA Trace gas Orbiter arrived at Mars in October 2016 and will spend 2017 using aerobraking to reach its final orbit, where it will study the martian atmosphere. It joins six other operating spacecraft orbiting Mars. The associated Schiaperelli lander did not fire its retrorockets for long enough and impacted the surface at high speed.

• NEAR Shoemaker -- Near Earth Asteroid Rendevous Mission Orbited the asteroid Eros 2000 - 2001 before softly touching down and operating on the surface for several days.
• Hayabusa -- Japanese spacecraft that, despite many problems, visited and studied the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa in 2005. It returned a sample of about 1500 small (10-100 micrometer) dust grains collected from the surface in 2010.
• Hayabusa 2" -- Japanese mission to study and return a sample from the asteroid Ryuga. Launched in 2014, will arrive at the asteroid in mid 2018 and return a sample around the end of 2020.
• Dawn -- Orbited the asteroid Vesta for more than a year. It left in 2012 and arrived at the asteroid Ceres in 2015, where it has been since.
• Osiris-REx -- Launched in September 2016, will rendevouz with the Near-Earth asteroid Bennu in August 2018, which it will study for over a year. In 2020 a "touch-and-go" manuever will collect a sample which will be returned to Earth, arriving in 2023.
• Rosetta -- ESA spacecraft the rendezvoused with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on in 2014 and followed it through its most recent close approach to the Sun. The Philae lander was sent to the surface and Rosetta itself touched down on the surface in September 2016, ending the mission.
  • Cartoon Adventures of Rosetta and Philae
  • Ambition -- an entertaining look at the goals of the Rosetta mission.

• Galileo -- Galileo orbited Jupiter 1995 - 2003 and (slowly) sent back pictures and other data.
• Juno -- NASA spacecraft that began orbiting Jupiter in 2016.
• Cassini-Huygens -- Cassini is orbiting Saturn and sending back pictures of the planet and its moons. They Huygens probe landed on the moon Titan.
• The Giant Planet Satellite and Moon Page -- An up-to-date listing of the moons of the jovian planets.

• New Horizons -- this spacecraft, launched in 2006, flew by Pluto in 2015. Provided our first (and last, for a long time) look at this world.

A few "Life on Mars" sites

• Description of the evidence for fossil life in the ALH84001 meteorite.
• ALH84001: Recent Scientific Papers Explained List with descriptions for non-experts of papers on ALH84001. Very good, though long.
• Center for Mars Exploration Lots of information on the exploration of Mars. The background information pages of the "Life on Mars?" section are good.

Comets, Meteors, and Impacts

• Minor Planet Center The web site of the Center sanctioned by the International Astronomical Union to keep track of the discovery and observation of asteroids and comets.
• Stardust Comet sample return mission.
• Deep Impact Collided a projectile with a comet nucleus in order to observe the result.
• The Spacewatch Project Describes the most prolific of the current programs for finding near-Earth asteroids.
• Asteroid Impact Risk A NASA site with questions and answers about the risk of Earth being hit by an asteroid or comet.
• NASA Planetary Defence Coordination Office
• NASA/JPL Center for Near Earth Object Studies Continuously computers comet and asteroid orbits and the odds of an Earth impact.
• National Academy of Science ReportDefending Planet Earth. Describes estimates of the risk from impacts and recommends ways that this can be better determined and mitigated.

Planets Around Other Stars

• Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia
• PLANET homepage Searching for planets with gravitational microlensing.
• Searching for Extrasolar Planets Marcy and Butler search program.
• Planet Quest NASA's website on the exploration of extrasolar planets.
• Kepler mission a highly-successful spacecraft searching for planets using transits.

The Sun

• SOHO: The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory - a satellite dedicated to observing the sun. Many interesting pictures and movies of solar activity.
• SDO: the Solar Dynamics Observatory has been examining the Sun with high angular resolution since 2010.
• STEREO: a pair of spacecraft that observe the Sun from positions leading and trailing the Earth in its orbit. With SDO, they provide continous observations of the entire surface of the Sun.
• GONG: Global Oscillation Network Group - a group of six telescopes around the world that observe the Sun for the purpose of doing helioseismology.
• Spaceweather.com News and information about the Sun-Earth environment.

Modified January 23, 2017