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Astronomy For Kids

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:28:08 +0000

Astronomy for children, students, and kids of all ages. KidsAstronomy.com, part of the KidsKnowIt Network, is the absolutely free astronomy resource designed to teach children about the exciting world of outer space.

Learning about science should never be boring. tHEY will take you to the moons of Jupiter, and explore the possibility of life on these distant worlds. Travel through the expanse of the universe and discover just how much SPACE there is in Space. And we will learn how modern day scientists are pushing the limits of space exploration every day.

For more information, please visit http://www.kidsastronomy.com/

ASSA

admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 07:11:17 +0000

The Astronomical Society of Southern Africa (ASSA), formed in 1922, is a body consisting of both amateur and professional astronomers. Membership is open to any interested person, regardless of knowledge or experience in astronomy. Shortly after the 1910 apparition of Halley’s Comet, the Cape Astronomical Association was established (1912), with SS Hough, HM Astronomer at the Cape, as President. In 1918, the Johannesburg Astronomical Association was created, with RTA Innes, Union Astronomer, as President. Following an invitation from the Cape Association it was decided in 1922 to merge the two Associations to form the “Astronomical Society of South Africa”.

The first astronomers in South Africa were travelling men of science who stopped over at Cape Town, the Tavern of the Sea, whilst on some errand. They were primarily interested in solving navigational problems in order to make seafaring safer. It is no surprise, therefore, that astronomers were involved in carrying out the first trigonometrical surveys as well as establishing an extensive network of lighthouses around Southern Africa. The Natal Observatory was founded in Durban at the time of the 1882 transit of Venus. The Natal Legislative Council maintained the observatory and appointed the first and only Government Astronomer, Edmund Nieson, who was distinguished for his lunar studies.

For more information, please visit http://www.saao.ac.za

CEPSAR

admin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:26:11 +0000

This new interdisciplinary centre brings together world-class researchers from three different Open University departments:
Earth & Environmental Sciences, the Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute (PSSRI), and Astronomy Research in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The Centre studies the origins, systems and processes with respect to the evolution and chemistry of materials that form the stars and planetary bodies, the processes and natural systems that shape the environment of their habitable world now and in the past, and the essential properties of a Solar System that allows life to develop on one of its planets.

The Centre provides an enthusiastic and integrated research culture, forging collaborative alliances across disciplines, and is committed to international research leadership. The research interests of Astronomy Research include multiwavelength observations and theoretical investigations of compact interacting binary stars; the formation and chemical evolution of the Galaxy and the chemical elements; the detection of extrasolar planets and computer studies of the orbital evolution of known exoplanetary systems. Research in Earth Sciences has the goal of understanding aspects of the Earth System. PSSRI is a prolific scientific research institute, with involvement in many past and forthcoming Solar System exploration missions as well as first class analytical and environmental simulation facilities for the investigation of extra-terrestrial materials and processes.

For more information, please visit http://cepsar.open.ac.uk

Ancient Astronomy

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:11:43 +0000

Ancient Greece is perhaps the best example of ancient astronomy practices. The Greeks saw the majestic figures in the sky and took them to be the gods that control the universe. Each constellation was given both a name and a back-story that tried to explain why this figure is now in the sky. Most of the constellations that they refer to today are actually the same ones that the Greeks revered and worshiped in ancient astronomy. Orion was a hunter who was punished and forced to stay up in the sky, never to rest below the horizon. This is why the constellation is always visible in the night sky.

The constellations they know of as the Big Dipper and Little Dipper were to the Greeks the Great Bear and the Lesser Bear. They even keep the original Greek names: Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. The star Polaris, which is the last star on the handle of the Big Dipper, was to the Greeks a person who was always chasing the Great Bear around the night sky. This is why you always see it following the Dippers as they move along, according to the Greeks ancient astronomy. The Egyptians also saw the constellations as Gods. The same constellation the Greeks took as Orion was known to the Egyptians as Osiris. This was their god of death and rebirth.

For more information, please visit http://www.to-the-stars.com

German-Spanish Astronomical Cente

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:40:03 +0000

From the 16th to the 18th of October 2009, a course on astronomical photometry for amateur astronomers was given at Calar Alto Observatory. Using the professional facilities of the Observatory, this absolutely new initiative was conducted by Calar Alto specialists with the aim of training amateur astronomers in the basics of astronomical absolute photometry, applied to the standard measurement of the brightness of the night sky. The final goal is to constitute a wide group of people capable of contributing to international campaigns of evaluation and reduction of light pollution in Spain and Europe.

The German-Spanish Astronomical Center at Calar Alto is located in the Sierra de Los Filabres (Andaluca, Southern Spain) north of Almeria. It is operated jointly by the Max-Planck-Institut fr Astronomie (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the Instituto de Astrofsica de Andaluca (CSIC) in Granada/Spain. Calar Alto provides three telescopes with apertures of 1.23m, 2.2m and 3.5m to the general community. A 1.5m-telescope, also located on the mountain, is operated under the control of the Observatory of Madrid. Planetary nebulae are sometimes called “cosmic butterflies”. In fact, their beauty and variety deserve the comparison.

For more information, please visit http://www.caha.es

The UK Astronomy Technology Centre

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 01:23:34 +0000

The UK Astronomy Technology Centre is the national centre for astronomical technology. We design and build instruments for many of the worlds major telescopes. We also project-manage UK and international collaborations. Our scientists carry out observational and theoretical research into fundamental questions such as the origins of planets and of galaxies.complex systems needed by these customers requires large international collaborations. The list of current collaborators is extensive - including universities, national institutes, research centres, and industry. With dedicated project management and systems engineering professionals, the UK ATC has considerable experience in successfully leading and participating in many such large projects.

Their research covers a broad range of topics in astronomy, but has special focus on studying dust and planets around nearby stars, galaxy formation and evolution, and nearby young stellar populations. These research areas are perfect for exploiting the state-of-the-art instruments being built at, or already delivered by, the UK ATC to telescopes around the world.They are also using our expertise to help shape the future of Europes next large telescope. They are participating in design studies for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E ELT).They support an active science and society programme through the work of the Royal Observatory Visitor Centre.New projects are inspired by the scientific need to detect fainter and more distant objects, and to improve our understanding of brighter objects through imaging, spectroscopy and polarimetry.

For more information, please visit http://www.roe.ac.uk

Center for Astrophysics

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:04:50 +0000

The Center for Astrophysics combines the resources and research facilities of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory under a single director to pursue studies of those basic physical processes that determine the nature and evolution of the universe. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) is a bureau of the Smithsonian Institution, founded in 1890. The Harvard College Observatory (HCO), founded in 1839, is a research institution of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, and provides facilities and substantial other support for teaching activities of the Department of Astronomy. The long relationship between the two organizations, which began when the SAO moved its headquarters to Cambridge in 1955, was formalized by the establishment of a joint center in 1973.

The CfA’s history of accomplishments in astronomy and astrophysics is reflected in a wide range of awards and prizes received by individual CfA scientists. Although their Sun is an ordinary star, the Solar System is the only planetary system known to harbor life. Studying the Solar System enables them to learn how stable planetary systems form and how planets develop the conditions needed for life. They think they know how stars live and die, but our picture of how stars form to begin with is incomplete. Although astronomers have discovered well over 160 planets in other solar systems, they do not really know what conditions actually produce life.

For more information, please visit http://www.cfa.harvard.edu

Infrared Astronomy

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 07:08:37 +0000

Infrared Astronomy is the detection and study of the infrared radiation (heat energy) emitted from objects in the Universe. All objects emit infrared radiation. So, Infrared Astronomy involves the study of just about everything in the Universe. In the field of astronomy, the infrared region lies within the range of sensitivity of infrared detectors, which is between wavelengths of about 1 and 300 microns (a micron is one millionth of a meter). The human eye detects only 1% of light at 0.69 microns, and 0.01% at 0.75 microns, and so effectively cannot see wavelengths longer than about 0.75 microns unless the light source is extremely bright.The Universe sends us a tremendous amount of information in the form of electromagnetic radiation (or light). Much of this information is in the infrared, which we cannot see with our eyes or with visible light telescopes.

Only a small amount of this infrared information reaches the Earth’s surface, yet by studying this small range of infrared wavelengths, astronomers have uncovered a wealth of new information. Only since the early 1980’s have we been able to send infrared telescopes into orbit around the Earth, above the atmosphere which hides most of the Universe’s light from us.
The new discoveries made by these infrared satellite missions has been astounding. The first of these satellites - IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite) - detected about 350,000 infrared sources, increasing the number of cataloged astronomical sources by about 70%. In space, there are many regions which are hidden from optical telescopes because they are embedded in dense regions of gas and dust. However, infrared radiation, having wavelengths which are much longer than visible light, can pass through dusty regions of space without being scattered.

For more information, please visit http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu

Aboriginal Astronomy

admin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 03:28:41 +0000

The Australian Aborigines were arguably the world’s first astronomers. Their complex systems of knowledge and beliefs about the heavenly bodies have evolved as an integral part of a culture that has been handed down through song, dance and ritual for some 40,000 years, predating by many millennia those of the Babylonians, the ancient Greeks, the Chinese, the Indians and the Incas. For the Aborigines, the stars not only evoked wonder; they also predicted and explained natural occurrences and provided celestial parallels with tribal experiences and behavioural codes.The Aborigines’ knowledge of the crowded southern sky was probably the most comprehensive possible for people dependent on the naked eye. They made accurate observations, not only of first and second order stars, but even of more inconspicuous fourth-magnitude stars, and in so doing devised a complex seasonal calendar based on the position of the constellations in the sky.

Aboriginal astronomy and its associated legends also had a purpose beyond the environment and collection of food. No less important to the preservation of the tribe as a cultural entity. This cultural entity was the organic relationship believed to exist between natural phenomena and social behaviour, and since many of the legends formulated to emphasise this connection involved the constellations, the night sky served as a periodic reminder of the moral lessons enshrined in the myths. Like the stained glass windows of medieval cathedrals, they provided in effect an illustrated textbook of morality and culture during the thousands of years when the only means of relaying the accumulated wisdom of the tribe was oral tradition.

For more information, please visit http://library.thinkquest.org

admin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 06:39:04 +0000

The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a Digital Library portal for researchers in Astronomy and Physics, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. The ADS maintains three bibliographic databases containing more than 8.0 million records: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and arXiv e-prints. The main body of data in the ADS consists of bibliographic records, which are searchable through highly customizable query forms, and full-text scans of much of the astronomical literature which can be browsed or searched via our full-text search interface.

Integrated in its databases, the ADS provides access and pointers to a wealth of external resources, including electronic articles, data catalogs and archives. We currently have links to over 8.1 million records maintained by our collaborators. In addition to its databases, the ADS provides the myADS Update Service, a free custom notification service promoting current awareness of the recent technical literature in astronomy and physics based on each individual subscriber’s queries. Every week the myADS Update Service will scan the literature added to the ADS since the last update, and will create custom lists of recent papers for each subscriber, formatted to allow quick reading and access.

For more information, please visit http://adswww.harvard.edu