Astronomy

This web site is based on Astronomy courses taught in 2000 and 2001 by Harold M. Hastings. The course was partially supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation to Hofstra University. Prof. Harold M. Hastings directed that grant. Co-PIs include Profs. Brett Bochner, Gillian Z. Elston, Stephen S. Lawrence, Stefan Waner.

Here is a photograph of the Orion nebula taken from the Hofstra Observatory. The Hofstra Observatory includes 8" Celestron telescopes, SBIG CCD cameras, and a SBIG spectrograph (expected Sept. 2000). The photograph was taken at a 1-second exposure with default sensitivity, and slightly smoothed with Photoshop.

 

Links to some other sites. Many site references are due to Andrew Fraknoi, A grand tour of the universe, Astr. Soc. of the Pacific, San Francisco, 1998.

Some sites of general interest

The astronomy picture of the day from antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html.

The night sky from Kitt Peak

Sunspot pictures and data

NASA's virtual telescope

Chris Dolan provides a good site for stars, constellations, Messier images, etc.

An additional general reference is

SEDS

Prepare for an observing session with their catalog of Messier objects at http://www.seds.org/messier/

Heavens above provides a good site for much of what we observe, including Comet Linear and the International Space Station.

Eclipse photographs can be obtained from The NASA/GSFC Eclipse Home page and from

www.mreclipse.com .

Hubble telescope images are available from several sites, including:

heritage.stsci.edu/

NASA photo gallery/

and via a link from Chris Dolan's site above.

How was mathematics used to discover planets around the sun ?

The answer

Images of planets photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov

More on planets http://www.hawastsoc.org

Magellan mission to Venus www.jpl.nasa.gov/magellan

Mars cmex-www.arc.nasa.gov

Mars pathfinder mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov

Comets www.skypub.com/comets/comets.html

More comets www.jpl.nasa.gov/comet/

Hubble images oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html

Extra-solar planets exoplanets.org/index.html

Open clusters www.seds.org/messier/open.html

Globular clusters www.seds.org/messier/glob.html

What are the differences between open clusters and globular clusters ?

Now on to exotic objects. See also the Hubble sites listed above

Neutron stars www.astro.umd.edu/~miller/nstar.html

Black holes cfpa.berkeley.edu/BHfaq.html

High Energy Astrophysics educational activities heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov

More to come. To add to the list, please send me email at Harold.Hastings@Hofstra.edu. Please include the site and your own brief critique. We welcome sites of significant educational interest.

 Click here for the Astronomy 12 syllabus

Click here for the Astronomy 280 syllabus

Return to Prof. Hastings's home page.