General links

• Astronomy Picture of the Day
• space.com -- good all-around news about space and astronomy
• Google Sky -- like Google Maps, but looking up
• Stellarium -- free planetarium-like software
• Celestia -- free space views software
• Heavens Above -- see when bright satellites, etc. are passing overhead

Resources

• Simulations at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL)
• Simulations at the University of Colorado Boulder (UCB)
• Wolfram CDF Player -- free software needed to run some of the demos below

Our Place in the Universe

• Video: The Known Universe by the American Museum of Natural History

Motions in the Sky

• Big Dipper in 3-d (UNL)
• Movies of Earth rotating: Earth alone, Earth with Moon visible
• Local sky vs. celestial sphere (UNL)
• Seasons (Pearson)
• Seasons (UNL)
• Seasons movie (UNL)
• Flashlight beams (Pearson)

Learning from the Sun and Moon

• A full "lunation"
• Phases of the Moon (Pearson)
• Cause of lunar phases (Pearson)
• Lunar phase simulator (UNL)
• Lunar phase quizzer (UNL)
• Animation of a solar eclipse (Pearson)
• Views of a solar eclipse (Pearson)
• Cause of lunar eclipse (Pearson)
• Eclipse seasons (Pearson)
• Inclination of Moon's orbit (UNL)

Motion and Gravity

• Illustration of retrograde motion (Wikipedia)
• Geocentric explanation of retrograde motion (Pearson)
• Heliocentric explanation of retrograde motion (Pearson)
• Introduction to parallax (Pearson)
• Parallax and distance (Pearson)
• Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion (UNL)
• Ellipses (Pearson)
• Ice skater
• Kepler's Third Law
• Phases of Venus: Geocentric (UNL)
• Phases of Venus: Heliocentric (UNL)
• Movie of Jupiter's moons
• Circular motion (UCB)

The Sun

• Multi-wavelength Sun (#1) (Pearson)
• Multi-wavelength Sun (#2) (Pearson)
• Solar system simulator (UCB)
• Angular size simulator (requires Wolfram CDF player)
• Flux simulator #1 (requires Wolfram CDF player)
• Flux simulator #2 (Pearson)
• Electric repulsion (Pearson)
• Steps in hydrogen fusion ("PP chain") (Pearson)
• Steps in hydrogen fusion ("PP chain") (UNL)
• Aurora

Stars

• Waves on a string (UCB)
• Wave interference (UCB)
• Three types of spectra (Pearson)
• Kirchhoff's laws for spectra (Pearson)
• Melting nail (UNL)
• Blackbody curves (Pearson)
• Blackbody curves (UNL)
• Blackbody curves (UCB)
• Hydrogen atom simulator (UNL)
• Chemical fingerprinting (Pearson)
• Doppler effect (UNL)
• Doppler shift of hydrogen lines (Pearson)
• Electromagnetic spectrum explorer (Pearson)
• Electromagnetic spectrum explorer (UNL)

• Parallax and distance (Pearson)
• Spectrum explorer (UNL)
• Doppler shift of hydrogen lines (Pearson)
• Spectrum of a moving star (Pearson)
• Spectrum of a star in a binary system (Pearson)
• Eclipsing binary (Pearson)
• Eclipsing binary (UNL)
• Star properties in the HR diagram (Pearson)
• HR diagram explorer (UNL)
• Stellar populations in a star cluster (Pearson)

Star Life Cycles

• Gas pressure (UCB)
• Solar thermostat (Pearson)
• Star properties in the HR diagram (Pearson)
• Molecular cloud with embedded stars (Pearson)
• Orion nebula (Pearson)
• Simulation of star formation (Pearson)
• Main sequence lifetime (Pearson)
• Life cycle of low-mass stars (Pearson)
• Steps in hydrogen fusion by the CNO cycle (UNL)
• Late-stage fusion in a high-mass star (Pearson)
• Life cycle of high-mass stars (Pearson)
• Crab nebula (supernova remnant) (Pearson)
• Evolution of the H-R diagram for a star cluster (Pearson)
• Star cluster ages and the H-R diagram (Pearson)

Stellar Remnants

• Mass transfer in a close binary system (Pearson)
• Orbital motion and escape velocity for Earth (Pearson)
• Relationship between escape velocity and planetary radius (Pearson)
• Spacetime near a massive object (Pearson)
• Time near a black hole (Pearson)

Galaxies

• Multi-wavelength Milky Way (Pearson)
• Views of a spiral galaxy (Pearson)
• Rotation on a merry-go-round (Pearson)
• Galactic rotation (face-on) (Pearson)
• Galactic rotation (edge-on) (Pearson)
• Spiral arms (Pearson)
• Galactic recycling (Pearson)
• Orion Nebula (Pearson)
• Simulations of colliding galaxies (Pearson)
• Simulations of the Antennae galaxies
• Simulations of the Mice galaxies
• Multi-wavelength views of Galaxy M81 (Pearson)
• Active Galactic Nucleus in Galaxy M87 (Pearson)
• Simulation of structure formation (Pearson)
• Formation of elliptical vs. spiral galaxy (Pearson)

Expanding Universe

• Cosmic distance scale (Pearson)
• Apparent vs. intrinsic brightness (Pearson)
• Measuring distance with radar (Pearson)
• Distance from H-R diagram (Pearson)
• Distance from Cepheid variable stars (Pearson)
• Distance from type Ia supernovae (Pearson)
• Tully-Fisher relation (Pearson)
• Hubble's law (Pearson)
• Measure the Hubble constant (Pearson)
• Hubble's law and the expanding universe (#1) (Pearson)
• Hubble's law and the expanding universe (#2) (Pearson)
• Expanding balloon (Pearson)
• Hubble's law and the age of the universe (#1) (Pearson)
• Hubble's law and the age of the universe (#2) (Pearson)
• Lookback time (Pearson)
• Cosmological redshift (Pearson)

The Big Bang

• Physics of the CMB (Pearson)
• The sky in microwaves and other wavelengths (Pearson)
• CMB and the geometry of the universe (NASA)
• Future of the universe (Pearson)
• Cosmic inflation (Pearson)
• Video about BICEP2 results

Dark Universe

• Rotation curve: merry-go-round (Pearson)
• Rotation curve: solar system (Pearson)
• Rotation curve: spiral galaxy (Pearson)
• Mass vs. distance: Solar system (Pearson)
• Mass vs. distance: Spiral galaxy (Pearson)
• Determine the distribution of dark matter in a spiral galaxy (Pearson)
• Gravitational lensing (Pearson)
• The 'Bullet cluster' system (Pearson)
• Video: large-scale structure in the universe (#1)
• Video: large-scale structure in the universe (#2)
• Computer simulation of structure formation (Pearson)
• Millennium Simulation Project

Life in the Universe?

• Habitable zone (Pearson)

Physics 110 Homepage • Astrophysics at Rutgers • Department of Physics and Astronomy • Rutgers University