OK - Let's get started!
Start by picking an object from a list, and then look it up at the Digitized Sky Survey, an electronic verison of an old photographic all-sky survey. Then, you will look at the object in radio, infrared, ultraviolet and xrays. Finally, we will see if HST has taken an image of it.
Click here to pick an object and begin the assignment
There are many peer-review astronomy journals. Here are a few:
Anyway, on to the assignment at hand. The Abstract Server Only a few years ago, there was no systematic catalog of astronomical literature on the internet. The first major step in this direction was the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS). ADS provided a computer database of all astronomy articles ever published in peer review journals! The database includes all necessary reference information (Title, Author name(s), Journal title, Subject keywords, volume and page numbers, year of publication) as well as a short abstract, or summary of the article. Of course, the database can be searched by all of these parameters. This made literature research much more efficient.
OK, let's see how this works. Follow the next link to ADS. If you have a frames-capable browser, it will open the ADS home page at Harvard University, with a little window at the top to give you step-by-step instructions. If you can't do frames, it will take you to the instructions page, and you will have to make prodigious use of the back button to review them (or print it out before moving on). So, let's go!
Another great resource on the web, for professional and amateur astronomers alike, are various sites where you can custom-make a star chart for any time and any location. If you're planning to go take a look at the stars on a particular night, one of these charts can tell you what constellations and planets are visible, as well as other interesting objects like clusters, nebulae, and other galaxies.
For this web lab, we're going to use one of these facilities to illustrate a point. Your zodiacal "sign" is determined by which of the 12 constellations of the zodiac the Sun was in on the day you were born. Almost everyone knows what their zodiacal sign is, but did you know that which constellation the Sun is in during any given month is slowly changing over the course of thousands of years? This means that if during late October of this year, the Sun is in the constellation Scorpius (it is not), then a couple of thousand Octobers from now it will have moved out of that constellation, and into another. This is because the Earth wobbles or precesses around its axis of rotation, which causes the background stars that make up the zodiacal constellations to change their apparent positions with respect to the Sun. So as the Earth wobbles, the Sun appears to change which constellation it's in.
Does this sound believable? Let's check it out by taking a look at your "true" astrological sign.
Click here to make a star map for your birth date.
Oftentimes, professional and amateur astronomers need to collect data about the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars - information in a more accurate form than what can be gotten from the kind of star chart you generated in part 3.
Click here to go to a site with several options for finding positional information.
Cartographers have been making maps of the earth for thousands of years, but none offered the perspective currently attainable through satelite mosaics. Here you will take a look at a few different "real time" mercator projection maps of the earth taken with satelites.
Click here for satelite maps of the earth.
So far we have taken you on a guided tour of astronomy resources on the Web. What if you were interested in looking something up that we did not just cover in this lab? For instance, in class we have touched on numerous topics that may have sparked your interest and now, being the inquisitive, knowledge hungry student, you want to know more. In this case, you would need to turn to a general search engine.
Click here to start a websearch.
Wasn't that fun? Hopefully you now have a good idea of what resources are available to astronomers on the web, and how to use them to some degree. Just to make sure you've covered everything, follow this next link to get a list of all the printouts and questions you should be handing in.
Click here to get the assignment summary.