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Astronomy 102, Summer 2005

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Cool Astronomy Pages on the Web

Astronomy Picture of the Day
A site that highlights a new cool astronomy picture each day, either because it's a particularly pretty picture, or because it says something about recent research. A great source for background screens!

Sky & Telescope
Sky & Telescope is a popular astronomy magazine, sporting news for amateur astronomers and reports on the latest in astronomical research. The website has a lot of background information about looking at the sky, and also features news notes about what the planets are doing and other recent announcements in astronomy.

Dyer Observatory
Vanderbilt's public-outreach observatory is located about a 20-25 minute drive south of campus. It has a 24" telescope and some other equipment, and holds public nights (which anybody can attend to hear a public lecture and look through the telescope) twice a month except during the winter. I will be taking interested members of this class to the observatory for private viewing (with just those in our class) on a couple of nights during the semester.

The Barnard-Seyfert Astronomical Society
A local amateur astronomy club. They run a number of events each year, including the Tennessee Star Party, which will be held September 26-28, 2003, at Camp Nakanawa (a 1.5 hour drive from Nashville, under a nicely dark sky). If you want to see the skies and the Milky Way in all their un-light-polluted glory, come to this star party.

Exploration @ Vanderbilt On-line Articles on Vanderbilt Astronomers
Exploration @ Vanderbilt is an online science research website that highlights some of the various different science that is going on at this University.
  • A Question of Planets: Article about Prof. David Weintraub's research about potentially planet-forming disks of material around very young stars.
  • Supernova Cosmology: Article about Prof. Robert Knop's research about the accelerating universe.
  • The Orion Nebula: Article about Prof. C. Robert O'Dell's's research about the the odds of planet formation in the Orion Nebula.
  • Reach for the Stars: Biographical profile of Prof. C. Robert O'Dell.


Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbot
This is the text of the book from the Gutenberg Project. It was written by Edwin Abbott in 1884. It describes the adventure of a square who lives in a two-dimension Universe, when confronted with a sphere from a higher-dimensional, 3D Universe. Not only entertaining, but useful, as it helps you understand analogies about a curved 3-dimensional Universe by thinking about what would happen in a curved 2-dimensional Universe.

StarStuff
An astronomy news site, written for the general public.

Bad Astronomy
A site which debunks a lot of misconceptions and myths about astronomy; it also reviews science fiction movies, pointing out just how wrong they were....

An Atlas of the Universe
A site which has 3d maps of the stars near the Sun, the local galaxy, the galaxies near the Milky Way, local clusters, etc. A great way to visualize how far away things are and where things are in the Universe.

SkyView Virtual Observatory
Download images from sky surveys performed by Astronomers over the years. A very useful site for professionals and curious individuals alike.

Extrasolar Planet Websites


Weather Websites




Last modified: 2004-September-17, by Robert Knop

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