This page will contain hyperlinks to sites containing information that may be of interest to Introductory Astronomy students, none of this material will be required for class, although of course, some of this material may contribute to your knowledge of astornomy in general.
Local Astronomy Information: If you are interested in actually going outside and looking at the sky in the Fargo-Moorhead area, these two webpages we have put together may be of interest to you.
- Local Observing Information: This webpage contains astronomical information for the Fargo-Moorhead area including sunrise/sunset times, current moon phase, locations of planets, comets, and deep sky objects in the sky, and aurora forecasts.
- Local Weather Information: This page tracks the local weather, letting you know whether to expect clear weather for observing.
General Astronomy Information: These sites contain a lot of more generalized information related to astronomy.
- AstronomyNotes.com: Essentially this is an online astroomy textbook. A very good supplemental resource.
- Welcome to the Planets: Produced by JPL, this is an excellent photographic tour of the Solar System.
- What’s Up 2007 - 365 Days of Skywatching: This free e-Book written by a dedicated Amateur Astronomy and hosed by Universe Today is a nice little guide to what's up in the night sky each night.
- Answers to Global Warming Skeptics: I am linking to Nick Strobel's page because good sound bites don't make good science. A lot of people have heard something on TV or in the paper that challenges Global Warming and they latch on to it, likely because the alternative of actually having to deal with this can be a bit scary. This page provides extensive links to debunk the Global Warming debunkers. The science is clear on this, anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something. And a mild warning that Dr. Strobel gets a little preachy in his politics at the end of the page, but the links are excellent.
Astronomy News: Here are some sites containing astronomy news or sometimes just trivia
- Astronomy News Feeds: This page is part of our class website. It automatically scours some astronomy news sites and puts the headlines in one place for you to read.
- Astronomy Picture of the Day: Sometimes its a very new picture, sometimes its historical, but ever day you will find a new astronomy-related picture here, as well as a good background description of it.
- Universe Today: A blog tracking all the astronomy news that is fit to print.
- Bad Astronomy is a great blog to go to review current astronomical news and commentary. The site gets its name from its origins as a site taking on common misconceptions in astronomy. As such, it has a section on misconceptions that contains a very good article debunking the folks who insist the moon landings were faked.
- AstronomyCast: A weekly podcast about astronomy, almost a spin-off of Slacker Astronomy.
- Slacker Astronomy: An astronomy news site and home of Slackerpedia Galactica and an accompanying podcast of debatable humor but reasonable accuracy.
- SpaceWeather.com: Science news and information about the Sun-Earth environment. Tracks activity on the Sun including Sunspots, Flares, and Coronal Mass Ejections. Also linked to Aurora Forecasts.
- The latest Hubble Space Telescope Images are usually available online as soon as you hear about it on the news. For more in depth information on what you may have heard about on the news, check out the Hubble Space Telescope Press Releases, which contain the same information the reporters get.
- Sky and Telescope's SkyTonight: A summary of recent news related to astronomy and spaceflight. Provided by Sky Publishing.
- JPL's Space Calendar: Run by Ron Baalke at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, this site tracks current space-related events as well as historical ones.