1. Astronomy in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Region
2. Education
3. Electronic Media
4. Miscellaneous
5. Meteoroids, Asteroids, and Comets
6. Space Weather/Auroras
7. Professional Organizations
8. New Links

Astronomy in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Region

• Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) Planetaria Website
• Ask-a-Planetarian - pose questions to the nine Fairfax County Public Schools Planetarium Teachers.
• Astronomy in the Nation's Capital--Washington, D.C. is a great place for astronomy enthusiasts to explore.
• Sky Watch--a regular monthly column by Blaine P. Friedlander Jr. featuring local astronomy-related news and events--appears in The Washington Post on the first Tuesday of every month.
• National Capital Astronomers
• The Northern Virginia Astronomy Club

Education

• A planetarium--perhaps the best tool for teaching about the sky! The Usenet newsgroup sci.astro.planetarium FAQ.
• As Radio Shack says, "You've got questions. We've got answers." Pose astronomy-related questions to the following online sources of help:
  1. Ask-a-Planetarian - pose questions to the nine Fairfax County Public Schools Planetarium Teachers.
  2. Send your questions via e-mail to ask ASTRO - Astronomy magazine Q&A monthly feature.
  3. Ask an Astronomer! including an archive of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) by date and topic.
  4. Ask the Space Scientist, including an archive of FAQs by subject.
• Look Up! Setting a Course for Sky Awareness. Look Up! is an innovative program for learning designed to stimulate heightened awareness and creativity in children through observation of the sky, its many moods and elements.
• StarDate Online AstroGlossary - from absolute magnitude to Zodiac, get plain-English definitions of commonly-used astronomy terms. (StarDate is the daily astronomy-related radio program produced by the McDonald Observatory, University of Texas.)
• NASA Education Initiatives
  1. New NASA Education Homepage
  2. NASA Spacelink - An Aeronautics and Space Resource for Educators Since 1988
  3. K-12 Teacher Resources in Astronomy. This directory, /pub/educator, contains files designed for teachers from NASA JPL's Educational Affairs Office.
  4. StarChild - A Learning Center for Young Astronomers
  5. KidSat - NASA's three-year pilot education program that allows students to operate instruments and download images in real-time from the Space Shuttle and, in the future, from the International Space Station.
  6. Telescopes in Education
  7. Kid's Space
  8. The NASA Lewis Research Center Information Infrastructure Technologies and Applications K-12 Program
• "Embrace Space" on Space Day, Thursday, 04 May 2000
• Amazing Space - the Hubble Space Telescope education initiative
• The Universe in the Classroom, a free quarterly educational newsletter published by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
• Project ASTRO - Astronomers and Educators as Partners for Learning. Developed and sponsored by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
• Telescopes in Education (TIE)
• Mount Wilson Observatory Constellation Quiz
• Hands-On UniverseTM (HOU) is an educational program that enables students to investigate the Universe while applying tools and concepts from science, math, and technology. Using the Internet, HOU participants around the world request observations from an automated telescope, download images from a large image archive, and analyze them with the aid of user-friendly image processing software.

Electronic Media

• Visit the World Wide Web site for SKY & TELESCOPE, the essential magazine of astronomy.
• Astronomy magazine - the world's largest English-language magazine for astronomy hobbyists.
• The award winning daily science radio series Earth & Sky
• USA TODAY Weather - The Sky and Space. A miscellaneous collection of online meteorology- and astronomy-related resources.
• Online version of Handbook of Space Astronomy and Astrophysics, Cambridge University Press, 1982
• Willmann-Bell, Inc. - Publishers and Booksellers Serving Astronomers

Miscellaneous

• All things NASA
  1. NASA Homepage
  2. A new online collection of NASA photographs and images provides a single point of entry to various photographic databases of six NASA centers. The NASA Image Exchange (NIX) provides an umbrella over existing photo databases at the centers.
  3. Astronomy Picture of the Day
  4. NASA's Observatorium Gallery
  5. NASA Human Space Flight [Editor's Note: The preceding hyperlink is broken ... good catch, Janice! Janice suggested the following equivalent Web page: NASA's Greatest Achievements]
  6. Women of NASA
  7. Mars Missions - Year 2000 and Beyond! (including Mars Patfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Surveyor 98, and Mars Surveyor 2001)
  8. Project Galileo: Bringing Jupiter to Earth
• Hubble Space Telescope
  1. Space Telescope Science Institute - Hubble Space Telescope (mirror site: http://marvel.stsci.edu/top.html)
  2. Hubble Space Telescope Pictures. Captioned pictures (taken from 1990 to the present) of stars, nebulae, quasars, galaxies, etc. (mirror site: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html)
  3. Amazing Space - the Hubble Space Telescope education initiative
• U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Data Online
• Virtual Reality Moon Phase Pictures - You can view the phase of the Moon for any date and time [1800-2199 A.D].
• Moon Calendar (for the current month). Graphical calendar.
• Center for Earth & Planetary Studies, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution. The Center for Earth and Planetary Studies (CEPS - pronounced like "steps" without the "t") is one of the scientific research departments at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. The Center plays an active role in research related to planetary and terrestrial geology using remote sensing data from Earth-orbiting satellites and manned and unmanned space missions. The Center possesses a computer image processing lab which allows for in-house processing and manipulation of remotely-sensed data.
• Welcome to EarthRISE - A large database of the Earth from space
• WEATHER FROM ABOVE: How to Receive Weather Satellite Imagery (including tracking weather satellites)
• Windows to the Universe
• Space Images Archive
• Living and Working in Space
• The Astronomy Cafe
• Galaxies
• Mount Wilson Observatory
• Solar Terrestrial Dispatch - Recent Solar Imagery
• Astronomy's Hotlinks
• Clementine
• Light pollution fact sheets and imagery from the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA)
• Space and time are universal themes (pun intended) in astronomy. Visit Flatland to see what life could be like in a two-dimensional world.
• Be they faint streaks or brilliant flares, satellite observing is like watching man-made "shooting stars!"

Meteoroids, Asteroids, and Comets

• NASA Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) system. Ever wonder how many planet-buster-sized objects (greater than 1/2 mile wide) are out there whizzing around in space (answer: approximately 2,000!), and if/when they come close to hitting the earth? If so, then you'll want to visit this truly "neat" web site.
• Comet Observation Home Page
• Comet Hale-Bopp--perhaps the comet of the century! The Comet Hale-Bopp home page is available at the following URLs:
  1. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/comet/ or http://galileo.ivv.nasa.gov/comet/)
  2. The Near-Live Comet Watching System at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, contains more than 1,300 images.
• Paramount Pictures' Deep Impact - the movie about a comet on a fatal collision course with the Earth. To be released 8 May 1998.
• Simulate the collision of an asteroid or a comet with any planet in Solar System! Visit Solar System Collisions to create your own "deep imact!" (Note: the first time you visit this site, click on the "Help" button for useful background information.)
• Terrestrial Impact Craters - Impact craters are geologic structures formed when a large meteoroid, asteroid or comet smashes into a planet or a satellite. Believe it or not, the Earth has been even more heavily impacted than the Moon! In contrast to the moon (where craters are well-preserved), craters on the Earth are continually erased by erosion and redeposition as well as by volcanic resurfacing and tectonic activity. Thus only about 120 terrestrial impact craters have been recognized. View several of the more prominent craters on Earth.

Space Weather/Auroras

• Today's Space Weather presented by the NOAA Space Environment Center. SEC's research scientists, working toward a better under-standing of the Sun-Earth connection, study the Sun's electromagnetic, particle, and magnetic-field emissions and the processes by which they affect Earth's space environment.
• USA TODAY Weather - Auroras, space weather
• The Aurora Page - Information, links, and images about the "Northern Lights."
• The Aurora - Information and Images

Professional Organizations

• The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) is the largest general astronomy society in the world, an international scientific and educational organization that brings together professional astronomers, amateur astronomers, educators at all levels, and interested laypeople. Among other interesting features of this Web site, follow the link to The Universe in the Classroom, a free quarterly educational newsletter.
• Virginia Space Grant Consortium

New Links

• Ever notice the odd-looking figure eight which appears on many globes? It's called an analemma. See the analemma for Washington, D.C. (can you tell when the maximum altitude of the noon Sun occurs during the year?), then visit the Analemma Web site to learn more about, well, analemmas!
• Astrology versus Astronomy - Astrology is the religion which claims that your life is influenced by the alignment of the Sun, moon, planets, and stars. Astronomy is the scientific study of outer space. Most astronomers do not believe in astrology. Who's right? Decide for yourself by visiting the following Web sites in which several astronomers present the case against astrology.
  1. Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy: What's Your Sign?
  2. The Real Constellations of the Zodiac
  3. Sun Signs: Astrolonomical vs. Astrological

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