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 New
Planet ~ Michael E. Brown is Professor of Planetary Astronomy at
the California Institute of Technology. He also jointly discovered object
2003 UB313, already known to many astrologers as Xena, although apparently
the use of this name is both premature and erroneous. You can find out
all the latest at Professor Brown’s website… |
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| NightSky.co ~ It is tempting to say here’s yet another online planetarium, though if you surf around this site you will find lots else to attract your attention. The Flash planetarium is definitely the centrepiece and it’s one of the most useable and attractive ones I’ve seen, but there are several other cool features that I’d certainly recommend as well. |
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| Night Sky Live ~ CONCAM means a CONtinuous CAMera placed somewhere in the world to watch the sky every night. Each one takes a three minute exposure every four minutes. Collectively, these devices make up a project that includes people, data and the WWW, aiming to make this information freely available to anyone who is interested. |
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| Photojournal: NASA’s Image Access ~ Part of the vast web presence that NASA maintains, this subdomain holds a photographic record of the images from their various explorative endeavours. These range from pictures of Neptune or Mercury’s surface, through to Pluto in the greatest detail we can expect currently. The user-friendly database is very easy to navigate… |
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| Planetary
Fact Sheets ~ A no frills website this one, maintained by Dr. David
Williams of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. It has a comprehensive
astronomical fact sheet for each of the main players in our solar system,
along with major satellites, the asteroids and notable comets, plus there’s
some great detail on Chiron too. |
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| Planetary Missions ~ This basic webpage is maintained by the staff at NASA. It offers a listing and links to further information, for every space mission with a planetary focus there has been, not only those from the US. Their chronology of lunar and planetary exploration is interesting too, with details of future missions to the Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars. |
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| Planet Positions ~ Way better than it sounds, this is a JavaScript-based animation showing the path of planets along the ecliptic, against the backdrop of the stellar fiduciaries. You cannot change your location, there is no working indication of time or date, and once you’ve animated the planets there is no easy way of stopping them. Kind of cool, anyhow… |
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| Pluto and Charon ~
From the definitive Nine Planets site of Bill Arnett, a man sicker than most at Pluto’s recent demotion from planet to dwarf … erm, planet. Pluto and Charon are of comparable size, are very close together and orbit one another round a mysterious central point. Can we really understand Pluto, without thinking also of its binary twin? |
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| Pluto Petition ~ Apparently, only 4% of those astronomers entitled, voted to reclassify Pluto as a minor planet. To continue this important debate,
Dr. Tony Phillips has started an online petition, although it is doubtful
whether the surfing public will prove any better informed. Got half a mind
to vote for Pluto? Don’t worry, that’s all you’ll need! |
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| Portal to the Universe ~ Cornerstone of the International Year of Astronomy (2009), Portal To The Universe aims to be a one-stop-shop for the latest astronomy information. Featuring news, video, images, blogs and audio this site serves as an index and aggregator using collaborative tools, enabling comments on existing posts or adding your own feed. |
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| ScienceDaily: Space & Time ~ ScienceDaily is one of the Internet’s most popular science news websites and since 1995, has built to more than three million visitors every month. This is the Space & Time feed, where you can keep up with the latest events and comment around the cosmos, but there are other sections too, on a range of science topics. |
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| SDSS / SkyServer ~ SkyServer brings the database of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and its mission to build a high-quality, three-dimensional map of the universe, directly onto your desktop. This site offers a number of helpful tools for teachers, students and for anybody else who wants to discover more. Their scrolling sky tool is a neat touch… |
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| Sedna ( 2003 VB12 ) ~ As our telescopes and research facilities improve, increasing numbers of celestial bodies are now being located in the outer reaches of the solar system. As of March 2004, the largest of these is called Sedna. A complete astronomical introduction to this latest discovery can be found here… |
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| SEDS Messier Database ~ Between 1758-1782 Charles Messier selected a group of diffuse objects that were difficult to distinguish from comets through the telescopes of the day. Luckily, his Messier Catalogue is known today for another reason, as a collection of the most beautiful features from the night sky including nebulae, star clusters and galaxies. |
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| Skymania ~ British astronomy site in blog format, presenting the latest celestial happenings and news from space in a way that almost everyone can understand and get enthusiastic over. In particular check out their guide to Mars, for the latest on the NASA Phoenix mission to the red planet, now extended through September 2008. |
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| Solar System Exploration ~ An awesome site from NASA that does just what it says on the tin. If you want to know the latest and most comprehensive information about the planets and their moons, breaking news, recent discoveries, related events and planned missions to find out more, you’ll have problems getting this kind of detail anywhere else… |
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