Astronomy 104: Stellar Astronomy
Spring Semester 2008

Astronomical Information for the Paul J. Feder Observatory

Day Length Information

The following tables of sunrise/sunset times are likely to be extremely useful in planning your observing. These times are only accurate to about 3 minutes. The position used in the computations is the location of the Paul P. Feder Observatory at Buffalo River State Park, about 14 miles from Campus.

Current Positions of the Planets

The following planetary ephemeris will be useful if you want to go outside to look at the planets or possibly for a class observing project.

NOTE ABOUT RISE/SET TIMES: If text is greyed out that means the rise/set time is on the previous/next day. "c.p." means the object is circumpolar and is continuously above the local horizon.

Useful Astronomical Links

• United States Naval Observatory Data Services provides information on the times of sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, the phases of the moon for any location on the Earth. They also provide other detailed astronomical information.
• NASA Eclipse Information: Want to know when and where the next eclipse is going to occur, check out this site from NASA.
• Aurora Forecast Map: From the University of Alaska-Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, this map shows the predicted extent of Aurora in the next 24 hours.
• SpaceWeather.com: This page is mostly for tracking solar activity, the cause of the "Northern Lights" or Aurora. It provides a nice "front end" to all the NASA data on solar activity, as near Earth asteroid flybys, planetary activity, and other solar system news.
• NOAA Space Weather page: A bit more technical than SpaceWeather.com. Also offers detailed images of current auroral activity in the northern hemisphere.
• Planetarium Software: If you want to "roll your own" sky charts, this site lists most currently available "desktop planetarium" software available. Includes Freeware/ShareWare/Commerial software for MacOS, Windows, DOS, OS/2 Warp, Xwindows, and PalmPilot!
• Skymaps.com provides professional quality skymaps every month that you can download. You can print the sky charts and use them outside. You need Adobe Acrobat to view them.
• Your Sky provides sky charts customized to your location on earth, although it doesn't offer terribly printable one.