![[Comet Hale-Bopp]](images/astro/HBcoe135T.jpg)
Akkana's Links to other astronomy-related sites
Useful general info for observers
- Sky View Cafe
A Java planetarium program, really quite good and surprisingly fast
- Heavens Above
Satellite predictions and other useful information
- Cal Sky
Supposedly has positions of comets, asteroids etc.
- Weekly
Information about Bright Comets
- Frequently Given Answers
for astronomy
- Sky Calendar
- Skywatcher's Diary
- The Sky Guide
- Learn What's Up
Has a nice day-by day description of what to look for each day in a month
- My Stars Live Low-res star maps
for any location and time
- Mark Taylor's
South Bay Astronomers'
Weather Page
- Weather
at Lick Observatory, from UC Berkeley
- Lick
weather data, from sensors at Harlan House
- Latitude/Longitude
for some bay area observing locations
(Useful for satellite and occultation predictions)
-
DarkSky -- estimate light pollution for anywhere in the US (from the IDA)
- Cloudfest
-
Areas where amateurs can contribute to the science of astronomy
- Skypub's
extensive list of all known astronomy-related mailing lists
- US Naval Observatory Data
Services Rise/set times, eclipse data, etc.
- Why observe things
that have already been observed? Various observers' opinions
- Beating the
Seeing Sky & Tel article
- The Use
of Filters in Visual Astronomy
- Star Parties
Big star party get-togethers across the US
Lunar and Planetary Observing
-
The Nine Planets a good starting point for
most questions regarding the science of the moon or planets
- Planetscapes A worthy
challenger to the Nine Planets
- Ephemeris.com:
the Solar System
- Association of Lunar
& Planetary Observers (ALPO)
a good starting point for observational questions
- British Astronomical
Association with numerous planetary and lunar observing pages
- Planetary Globe
Icosohedrons Make your own planet "globe" if you have a color printer
- Samadhi -- a space library
Includes solar system maps and surfaces for the planets and their major moons
- JPL Maps of the Solar System
- JPL's space simulator
Views of any solar system object as it looks at a specified time. Neat!
- NASA's Planetary
Photojournal
- Some interesting
celestial events from Project Pluto
- IOTA, International
Occultation Timing Association
- IOTA Asteroid
Occultation Section
- Ephemeris: Calculate
Rise and Set Times
- Locating the
Planets Descriptions of how to find the planets and what to
look for
- JPL Horizons system:
Ephemeris generator and lots of information on orbital dynamics
Saturn
- my sketch and summary of the A-ring gap
controversy
- History of
observations of gaps in the A Ring by Jeff Medkeff
-
Saturn 1995-6 Ring Plane Crossing Observation Campaign
with plenty of info which is still useful, such as satellite events
Pluto
- Bill
Ferris' Pluto finder chart
- Christine Lavin's song
about Pluto, "Planet X" Also famous as the first song to include a
URL, that of the:
- Pluto Home Page
- IAU bulletin:
The Status of Pluto Is it a planet, or not?
- Pluto May Get Demoted
ABC News article on Pluto's planethood status
Moon
- My Hitchhiker's Guide to the Moon
which has a much more extensive list of links
- My new Lunar Feature
Predictor -- Predict when transient features such as sunrise rays
will be visible.visible.
- My moon phase applet
- If you don't like my applet,
there's a similar one on the
Skynotes page,
or you can download
it
- lunar
sun ray events such as the Hesiodus Ray
- Moon Phase CGI program
- Calculate Moon
rise/set times
- Moon Rise/Set Times
- New Thoughts
on Understanding the Moon Illusion
Discussion of why the moon looks larger when near the horizon
Deep-Sky Observing
- SEDS Messier Page
With "Goodie List" and Messier Marathon info
- Virtual Messier
Star maps showing all the Messier objects -- very nice.
- Benoit
Schillings' images of NGC objects
- Visual Astronomy of the
Night Sky from Roger Clark, author of Visual Astronomy of
the Deep Sky
- Adventures in Deep
Space Challenging Observing Projects for Amateur Astronomers
including some info on observing Einstein's Cross
-
Sketches of all the Messier objects as well as other objects
- The Minimum
Aperture Catalog An attempt to catalog the smallest aperture
needed for visual observations of specific objects, listed by
constellation. Includes links to many sketches.
- The NGC/IC Project
- Herschel 400
- Plain ascii Herschel 400
list
- Digital Sky Survey
- ARVAL Catalog of Bright Objects
- Deepsky Atlas from the
Hawaiian Astronomical Society
including the Beyond
Messier and Caldwell List
- RASC Finest N.G.C.
Objects Nice list, difficult formatting
- SEDS' list of
Deep Sky collections and catalogs similar to Messier's
- Observing objects inside M31
-
Table showing which filters work best with which objects
- Milky Way maps
in various wavelengths
- Steve Waldee
has many interesting articles on deep-sky observation
- OB Associations
Loose open clusters of young stars
- An Interactive Lesson on the Hubble System of
Classifying
Galaxies
- Planetary Nebulae Observer's Home
Page
- Deep Sky Drawings
- Dark
Sites Database a database of sites throughout the world;
scant right now but may grow
- Objects for
Suburban Observers
- International Supernovae
Network
Clubs and Organizations
Northern California
- San Jose
Astronomical Association
- Peninsula
Astronomical Society
Also, PAS member
Bob Black has a page of pictures from the last PAS Yosemite
star party, including
a picture of me
- Fremont Peak Observatory
(Bob Black also has a
FPOA page)
- TAC -- The Astronomy Connection
Large, active Bay Area observing group with an e-mail list.
- Dark Horizons
Extensive list of local observing sites and other information
- Ptolemy's Supper Club
- Hall's Valley Astronomical Group
- Santa Cruz Astronomy Club
- North Valley
Astronomers (a new club in Chico)
- Chabot Space & Science Center
(and observatory)
- East Bay Astronomical Society
- SF Sidewalk Astronomers
-
San Mateo Astronomical Society
- Astronomical
Association of Northern CA List of clubs, observatories, etc.
- Group 70 -- Large
Amateur Telescope Project in the SF Bay area
- Lick Observatory
- Stacy's
Stargazing Getaways Some local observing sites
Southern California
- Los Angeles Astronomical Society
- LA Sidewalk Astronomers
- Ventura County Astronomical Society
sponsors an annual astrophoto program
Elsewhere
-
AstroNet's list of CA astronomy clubs
- International Dark-Sky Asso
ciation
- Astronomical League
Lots of useful short articles
- Saguaro Astronomy Club
Including the SAC databases of deep-sky objects and double stars
- Fort Bend Astronomy Club
Lots of useful links
- New Mexico Tech's astro page
Including info about "Enchanted Skies" star party
- AAVSO, variable star observing org.
- Albuquerque Astronomical Society
- Arizona
Observing Sites
- sci.astro.amateur photo
page
- Hawaiian
Astronomical Society
General astronomy pages
- NASA Astrophysics Data System
Professional articles, abstracts, etc.
- Amateur Astronomy
magazine A new magazine (hardcopy, not web) on amateur astronomy
- The Astronomer
a magazine for the advanced amateur
- The Amateur Astronomer
Astro-Guide A general astronomy magazine
- Jeff Bondono's
extensive astronomy page
- Dave's Astronomy
Magazine
- Beginning Astronomy Lessons
A monthly online lesson.
- New Astronomy
-- online astronomy magazine
- AstroArts
Online Java simulations and lots of other great stuff
- Sky Publishing publishes of
Sky and Telescope magazine. This site is full of useful info.
- Astronomy
Magazine from Kalmbach Publishing
- CosmoCalc
-- a JavaScript Cosmology Calculator
- The Backyard Astronomer
-- local PAS astrophotographer Paul Mortfield
explains astronomy on some Friday nights on bay area channel 5 news.
- Martz Observatory and
Astronomical Assn. Lots of articles and links
- Mel Bartels
on Visual Astronomy, including
Counting the Pleiades
- Estimating Limiting
Magnitude
- Fox_t_Mulder
presents Astronomy
-
Form for reporting bright meteors
- Meteor
Showers A very comprehensive list of meteor showers all year long
- Astro
Notes from the Astronomical
League Various useful short articles -- polar alignment, telescope
selection, etc.
-
Siderial Clock applet
-
Astronomy chat on undernet Recently formed by several sci.astro.amateur
posters. I haven't tried it myself.
- Mt Pinos Weather Web-Cam
-
Image of the Bay Area at night
- Dark
Matter Flowchart
-
Phoenix New Times article on Robert Burnham
Star charts on the web
- Galactic Sky charts
generates and displays a low-res star chart
- MWO Online Star Map
generates a Postscript star chart
- Starchart Map
Server another Postscript star chart
- VRML view
of nearby stars I haven't tried this yet -- gotta get a VRML viewer!
but it sounds cool
Astronomy Vacations and such
- Skywatcher Inn, AZ
- Star Hill Inn, NM
Choosing telescopes
- Recommendations for
Beginning Astronomers by Jay Freeman
-
Parent's Guide to Children's Telescopes
-
The Telescope FAQ
- How to Choose a
Telescope from Sky Publishing
-
So, You Want to Buy a Telescope? from the
Astronomical League
- Jay Freeman's excellent article on
Choosing Binoculars
- Todd Gross' more specific
Binocular Reviews
Telescope making and maintenance
- Amateur Telescope Making
page, hosted by the Tallahassee
Astro Society Lots of good stuff -- check under "articles" for
details about things like cleaning and
collimation
- The ATM Page
-
Mel Bartels' Collimation Page
-
Nils Olof Carlin's Collimation Page
- Adventures in Collimation
Excellent diagrams showing what to look for when collimating
- Daylight
Collimation of a SCT or Maksutov-Cassegrain
- Ultralight
Dobs by Mel Bartels.
- Dobsonian Evolution,
an excellent collection of photos and pointers to more ultralight dobs
- How to build
a 13" airline portable scope by Ray Cash of SFSA
- The Miatascope
a 10" truss-tube dob that fits in the trunk of a Miata
- Chick Shaw's Ultralight
10"
- 12.5" Split-Ring
Newtonian By far the best pictures I've seen of split-ring mount
construction
- ATM FAQ
- ATM mailing list archives
- Ken's Telescope Calculator
Calculate field size, exit pupil size, etc.
With fairly extensive collection of eyepiece data.
- Build Your Own Dobsonian
Telescope!
-
A sketchy description of a homemade laser collimator
- Light baffling
- Olle Eriksson's "Astro
Science" with some good ATM info
- Mark
VanDerWettering's ATM Page
- Albert Highe
has several interesting lightweight dob designs
- ATM Programs
-
Euan Mason's parallelogram binocular mount
- Scott Wilson's bino mount
Astrophotography
- Thierry LEGAULT
has some absolutely stunning high-resolution CCD images
- Antonio Cidadao's
Lunar and Planetary Observation and Imaging
- Brad Wallis and
Robert Provin who are on the astrophotography mailing list, and
I believe also have a good book on advanced astrophotography, though
they don't plug it on their page and I haven't found it yet
-- maybe from Willmann-Bell?
- Michael Covington
Author of a well-known book on astrophotography,
and of some free software available for download.
- Celestial Images Astrophotography Photography by John P. Gleason
- California's Big Boys
A gallery of impressive work from some California astrophotographers
- Al Kelly's CCD Astrophotography Page
An outstanding collection of CCD images
- Astro Imaging Hints Page
-
Meteor Photography Notes from the Fort Bend Astronomy Club
- Adirondack
Video Astronomy Video camera hookup kits for telescopes
- Chuck's Astronomy Page
Great astrophotography, comparisons of color vs. B&W, articles on
things like
knife-edge focusing, and a very useful
Grayscale Step Image to check your monitor adjustment so that
you can see all the detail in photos -- try it, it makes a noticable
difference!
-
Astrophoto exposure calculator
-
The Art of CCD Imaging Including a good description of how
to build a Hartmann mask for focusing
- Jack Schmidling Productions
Nice astrophotography samples
- Gravitational
Lenser, a filter for Adobe Photoshop (if you have Photoshop)
- SuperFix
an astro image processing program
- "Barn Door" homebuilt equatorial camera mounts:
- How to make a
CCD astro-camera from a hand scanner
- $149 B&W CCD camera
- Jan Curtis
Nice aurora borealis shots, and other weather info (esp. Alaska weather)
- Richard Navarrette
also has some nice astrophotos
-
Nighttime satellite shot of the US showing light pollution.
Makes me glad I don't leave in the eastern half of the country!
A few memorable Hubble photos
- The Hubble
Deep Field The all-time classic Hubble shot
- The Hawaii
Active Catalog of the Hubble Deep Field
Imagemap of the HDF -- click on a galaxy to find out everything
known about it
- Hubble Deep
Field Project at the Hubble Space Telescope site
- The
newer "Deep Field South"
-
Close-up of the "Antennae" or "Ringtail" galaxies, NGC 4038-9
These galaxies are easily visible in a small earthbound 'scope,
but not like this!
- NGC1365
Off an arm of this faint (from earth) galaxy, the Hubble imaged many
much more distant galaxies. Amazing.
- A Storm on
Saturn
- Mars at
Opposition
and other photos
- Interstellar
Dust-Bunnies of NGC 891
- and other
Astronomy Pictures of the Day
Comets
- Comet Comments
by Don Machholz
- JPL Comet Mirror Site
- second JPL Comet Mirror Site
- original JPL Comet Site
- Official Hale-Bopp page
(run by Hale and Bopp, the comet's discoverers)
-
NASA's Comet Fact Sheet Not always terribly current
- Sky Publishing's
Comet Page
- Rob Lightbown's
Comet Page
- Dale Ireland's Astronomy Page
has lots of good comet info -- also eclipses, satellites, and photography
- The Silicon Sky
Includes a Hale-Bopp Observation Notebook
-
Comet anti-tails
- G. Gilein's Comet page
Finder charts, etc. -- warning, the text is in Dutch
Software and Data
- NASA Astronomical Data Center
- Willmann-Bell publishers
which publishes a wide variety of books on science, math, celestial
mechanics, star atlases, and other astro-related books.
- Bill Arnett's
list of astro software (Much more up to date than my list)
- Fourmilab's extensive collection
of fun science-related software/data
- How to compute
planetary positions
- Bureau des Longitudes
(mostly in French) including
a page with links
to orbital theories for various planetary satellites
PC Programs:
Planetarium Programs
- GUIDE
An excellent program which comes with a very extensive CDROM database.
Recently added bitmapped planets and nebula isophotes,
and has replaced ECU as my favorite program.
Has a color star option. Not shareware.
- Earth Centered Universe
Excellent shareware planetarium program -- very fast and easy to use,
yet still makes very pretty, readable maps.
The registered version comes with a good CDROM database collection.
My only gripe is that it doesn't show nebula boundaries.
- SkyMap
A very well-regarded shareware program.
Shows nebula boundaries; has eyepiece field overlays.
Arguably slower but arguably more accurate than ECU.
It's definitely worth trying both.
- Home Planet
Freeware. Nice graphics of the earth, but the star map is much less usable
than ECU or SkyMap. Does star colors.
- Megastar
More expensive ($129 including Guide Star Catalog); I haven't tried it.
- Distant Suns
- Skyglobe A small planetarium
program, without some of the fancier features but supposedly quite
fast and efficient on a less powerful PC
-
HNSKY planetarium program Freeware
- Skyglass
A new shareware program
- TheSky
is popular and well regarded
- Deepsky 2000
Solar System predictors
- MoonCalc
- Mars Previewer
Freeware to show Martian features correctly oriented
- Deep Space
Plots orbits in 3-space, or even display stereo images. Shareware.
- Dan's
PC Astronomy Software Jupiter/Saturn satellites, etc. Freeware
- A different Jupiter
program also located on TAMU
- another Jupiter's moons program
- Windows Ephemeris Tool
(positions for comets and asteroids)
(also at another
location)
- Meridian astronomical software
Planetary predictions -- positions, phases, satellites, great red spot
-
Interactive Moon Map
- Dance of the Planets is a very
well-regarded and pretty solar system simulator
- Determine Orbital
Elements from Observations
freeware, also from Project Pluto
Other types of programs
-
Skymap, the satellite tracking program (not to be confused with
the planetarium program of the same name)
- dObjects
An Astronomical Database and Observing Log program
- NGCView -- observation
logging software
-
EYEPIECE and other programs by Steve Waldee
(oops, I think this is the wrong link ... I'll track this down soon)
Unix and other:
- Xephem
(also available for other platforms)
- Physics & Astronomy
programs from
Scientific Applications on Linux
- SEDS software collection
- Billy's Astronomy Program Gives rise/set/transit times for various objects
- Also check SIMTEL sites for a planetary motion simulator in C called DE118I
Silly BASIC Programs:
- Sky & Telescope
BASIC source for various astro algorithms
- Astronomy
Magazine's BASIC programs
Data
- Astronomical Data Center
- ADC catalog
list
- Hipparcos
- SAC database
of NGC objects
-
WWW Virtual Library: Astronomy and Astrophysics
-
The Space FAQ
- Martin V. Zombeck's
Handbook of Space Astronomy & Astrophysics
- NASA Astrophysics Data System
Astronomy Research and the Space Program
- Hubble Space Telescope Cool stuff
from the Hubble, including MPEG movies
- The SETI @ home project
How you can use your PC or Unix box to help with SETI
-
Automatic Telescopes on the Internet
- Federation of American Scientsts
Life on Mars site which tries to maintain links to every other
web page relating to the recent discovery
Satellites
- Heavens Above
Observing artificial satellites
- GSOC Satellite Predictions
Satellite predictions for your area
- Vandenberg
AFB Launch Schedule and how to
view or
photograph them
- J-Track
Satellite Tracking Cool Java program showing orbits of current satellites
-
Satellite info
-
Satellite passes
-
Visual observation of satellites
-
More satellite observation info
- TiPS tethered satellite
- NOAA polar satellite flights
-
Skymap orbital elements for NOSS satellites Interesting satellites which
travel three together in a triangular formation.
- Satellite orbital elements
- NOSS trio orbital elements:
Zip format or
text
Companies, and stuff for sale:
Used:
- Astro-Mart
-
The Starry Messenger
- SEDS Astro-Ads
-
Astronomy's Classifieds
- EPage Classifieds
- On Line Astro Trader
- Anacortes Telescope and Wild Bird
Used Astrophysics and other interesting stuff; also carries new
Takahashi equipment
New:
Note, this list tends to reflect my own personal shopping list
at any given time. It is not intended to be comprehensive.
If you don't see it here, try the astronomy resource locator
on Astronomy Net.
- Astronomy-Mall
Listings for many companies making astronomy-related equipment
- Crazy Ed Optical
- Orion
-
Paul Rini's homebuilt eyepieces
- Big dobs:
- Vixen
finally has a home page in English!
- Amateur Telescope
Maker's Resource List
- Telescope
Warehouse William Vorce, surplus astro stuff
- Bob Fies, a mirror coater
in San Carlos, CA
- American Science and Surplus
All kinds of cheap neat gadgets, including optics
- Stargazer Steve
Inexpensive small dobsonian telescopes -- good beginner 'scopes.
- Company 7 Telescopes and
high-end accessorties, like Losmandy mounts
- Protostar
Excellent spiders, secondary holders, diagonal mirrors
-
Sources for Solar Filters (Just a list of phones & addresses,
no web links)
Note: I avoid buying from Rainbow Symphony, because they use
spam email advertising techniques
- Hands-on Optics
used equipment as well as new
Back to Akkana's Home Page
Back to Akkana's Astronomy Page
mail comments
![[Comet Hale-Bopp]](images/astro/HBcoe135.jpg)
