Space Exploration - Reference Library

Whether you?re just interested in what?s going on, or you?re doing some research the links coupled with this thread should help you on your way.

This thread will be updated whenever new sites are suggested or found, so check back frequently. If you find a broken link, please do let me know!

Space Agencies
NASA

ESA

Russian Aviation and Space Agency (English version)

China National Space Agency (English version)

Canadian Space Agency

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (English version)

News Sources; online and off
Space.com - Articles on just about anything related to astronomy and space exploration.

Sky and Telescope - Homepage of the premier astronomy magazine. Just about everything you need here from articles to instructions how to observe to an online astronomy store.

Astronomy News - Homepage of another magazine. Contains lots of good articles and a very informative "Intro to Astronomy" section.

Science & Technology at Scientific American - Homepage for the leading scientific journal. Includes articles on astronomy and space science, as well as articles on pretty much every other avenue of science.

SpaceRef.com - The motto says it all; "Space news as it happens."

SpaceWeather.com - "News and information about the Sun-Earth environment."

Telescopes, Satellites, and Rovers! Oh my!
Big Bear Solar Observatory - All about the telescope plus daily images of the Sun as seen from Earth.

GOES Solar X-Ray Imager - Images of the Sun updated every minute.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) - All about the telescope and tons of SOHO images.

The Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) - All about LASCO plus images.

The Hubble Space Telescope Project - All about the HST plus images.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory: Very Large Array - Everything you could ever want to know about this array plus images.

Arecibo Observatory - Information on the dish for anyone from the general public to scientific users.

The Parkes Observatory - The Australian observatory that played an important role in the Apollo program.

Cassini-Huygens - Information on and images from the joint NASA/ESA mission to Saturn.

Mars Exploration Rover Mission - The online home of Opportunity and Spirit.

Mars Global Surveyor - Information on and images from the MGS

Mercury Surface, Space Enviroment, Geochemistry, and Ranging Probe (MESSENGER) - Information on the mission to learn more about Mercury.

Spitzer Space Telescope "The Spitzer Space Telescope is a space-borne, cryogenically-cooled infrared observatory capable of studying objects ranging from our Solar System to the distant reaches of the Universe. Spitzer is the final element in NASA's Great Observatories Program."

GRACE: Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment - Using an array of information, the GRACE satellites will be used to examine the gravity field of the Earth.

Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking - NEAT is comprised of two 1.2 meter telescopes, with one located at the Palomar Obervatory and the other at the Maui Space Survailance Site. The purpose is to find near Earth asteroids and comets. Updated infequently.

The LINEAR Project - The Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) Project is tasked with the goal to demonstrate the application of technology originally developed for the surveillance of earth orbiting satellites, to the problem of detecting and cataloging near Earth asteroids.

Nordic Optical Telescope - Founded in 1984 with the purpose of operating a Nordic Telescope for observations at optical and infrared wavelengths. Thanks to E_T for this one.

The European Southern Observatory - An intergovernmental organisation for astronomical research. It has eleven member countries. ESO operates astronomical observatories in Chile and has its headquarters in Garching, near Munich, Germany. Thanks to E_T for this one.

High Altitude Observatory - Dedicated to studying the Sun and the effects it has on Earth's upper atmosphere.

The Institute for Solar Physics (English version) - Home of the Swedish Solar Telescope, the most advanced groundbased optical telescope. For some great pictures of the Sun, take a look here.

Kitt Peak National Observatory - "Supports the most diverse collection of astronomical observatories on Earth for nighttime optical and infrared astronomy and daytime study of the Sun."

The James Webb Space Telescope - Home of the JWST, which is an infrared space telescope scheduled to be put into service in August, 2011.

University of Chicago: Yerkes Observatory - Yerkes Observatory houses the world's largest refracting telescope, which is over 100 years old.

Reference
Kid?s Cosmos - A very good, basic level resource for both students and educators.

Curious About Astronomy? Ask an Astronomer - An FAQ with answers to just about any question about facet of astronomy you could think of.

Crater Forms - Descriptions of how different types of craters form and examples of each from around the Solar System.

Views of the Solar System - Information about and images of just about everything contained in the Solar System.

Dr. Odenwald's Ask The Astronomer Resource - Another FAQ with answers to just about any question about facet of astronomy you could think of.

Phil Plait?s Bad Astronomy - Debunking of several hoaxes and theories. Also contains information on additional astronomical subjects.

Starshine.com: Astronomy - Information about and images of just about anything astronomical.

International Occultation Timing Association Main Table of Contents - For the best way to view an asteroid visit this site. It gives predictions for occultations of stars by hundreds of asteroids.

Heavens-Above.com - Track satellites, the Space Shuttle, and the ISS. Register to see what's above your head and when.

NOVA Elegant Universe Program - The 3-hour long NOVA miniseries on string theory broken down into 24 10-minutes or less parts. Available in QuickTime and RealVideo.

Earth Impact Effects Program - "An easy-to-use, interactive web site for estimating the regional environmental consequences of an impact on Earth."

Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) - A great site for students and researchers alike. Here you can find interactive maps of the sky, and enlightening information on all the Messier objects, as well as many NGC objects.

SEDS Messier Database

Space Telescope Science Institute Astronomy Resources - They bring the cosmos to Earth. Thanks to E_T for this one.

HubbleSite - Sponsored by the Space Telescope Science Institute, here you can find a plethera of information regarding the HST.

Lunar Atlases - Probably the most comprehensive Lunar Atlases on the internet.

How Stuff Works "Space Channel" - Have a question about something do do with astronomy? There's a pretty good chance you can find the answer here (plus it'll be easy to understand.)

Parallax - A short, easy to read description of what parallax isand a nifty JAVA applet to demononstrate. You need a JAVA enabled browser for this one.

The Catalouge of Comet Discoveries Homepage - Information on comets discovered since 1990. Very comprehensive.

The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia - Information on extarsolar planets. (English version)

NASA Eclipse Homepage - NASA's resource for anything about eclipses.

Neutron Stars - Pretty much anything and everything you could want to know about neutron stars, and then a little more. Very well done.

Misc.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: Space Environment Center - "The official source of space weather Alerts, warnings, and forecasts."

Astronomy Discussion Pages - Discussion board dedicated to amateur astronomers.

Spacesounds.com - Listen to the radio signals from such things as Sputnik, black holes, quasars, to the clouds of Jupiter. Some of these are quite creepy sounding.

The Universe in Powers of 10 - "View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons."

The American Association of Amateur Astronomers

Astronomy Picture of the Day

The Clear Sky Clock Homepage - An attempt to show when within the enxt 48 hours there may be clear/dark skies to do some observing. Very comprehensive and covers from Canada, the United States, some parts of Mexico, and the Bahamas. Thanks to UofCinLA for this one.

Astronomical Society of the Pacific: NGC Images

Planetary Photojournal - NASA's Image Access Homepage. Thanks to E_T for this one.

[edit on 2/20/2006 by cmdrkeenkid]

Thanks for the links.

Thanks for the links, cmdrkeenkid.
I think you should also add APOD(NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day) in here? I know its part of NASA, but I think its worth adding it as a separate link! Or you can add the link of the APOD archive, they have hundreds of pictures. Its up to you!
Great job

Edit: Thanks for adding the link!

[edit on 19-8-2004 by jp1111]

European Southern Observatory
Space Telescope Science Institute

Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT)

Planetary Photojournal

I just added a bunch of links... I'll be adding even more within the coming days.

Umm..would ISRO be a wothy addition to the above links??
(Indian Space and Research Organisation)

www.isro.org...

Thanks for the links

www.universetoday.com...

this amazing anaomaly is going on this weekend!

checkit out!

reply to post by cmdrkeenkid

Thanks for the info, and the effort!

I've just written a basic tutorial on how to get data on the moon from JAXA's Kaguya site and turn them into pictures.

I'll do some more on other space agencies when I get round to it!

onebigmonkey.com...

I've now done a tutorial on how to get and use Chandrayaan lunar data from India's Space Agency:

onebigmonkey.com...

Enjoy

And finally a page on China's data:

onebigmonkey.com...

Annoyingly the individual tiles for China's global map are all down, but I did download them all when they were available and have put the ones covering the Apollo landing sites in a Dropbox account, along with the global DEM file that Chine very kindly emailed me (I asked nicely ). Annoyingly it didn't occur to be to grab the DEM files when they were up, hence the only one available being the global one.

Links to those files are on the tutorial page. If anyone has other areas of the moon they would like to look at using China's data then let me know and I'll upload the tile somewhere.

Very useful little guide on how to download images in .IMG format from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image search site and open them in Photoshop:

www.lpi.usra.edu...

The document has links to the search facility, but it's here wms.lroc.asu.edu... if you want to cut to the chase.

In theory the method described will also work for Japanese and Indian images that are in .IMG format, but part of the process is knowing image properties that need to be determined using the bespoke software those space agencies have developed already. Indian documents are all so large they will just lock up your computer for the day!

It will, however, work for the '.03' image format that China's data uses - see my page above for links to the files covering Apollo's landing sites for examples.

I've updated my pages above to include using the Photoshop method - including how to use Photoshop to open Japanese images.

ESA Data portal for their probes:

archives.esac.esa.int...#!Home%20View

Sadly not much in the way of interactive search stuff.

e2a: However what you can access are the public data files for all their missions, including the rosetta comet one:

psa.esac.esa.int...

Huge resource!

a reply to: cmdrkeenkid

Thank you for the links. You did a great job gathering them all at one place.

this is just to post a little info about FRBs = Fast Radio Bursts

the linked article lists names of interest in this field of study/interest



link: www.thecommonsenseshow.com... um=rss&utm_campaign=scientists-confirm-that-mysterious-radio-signals-from-outer-space-are-not-made-by-humankind


TITLE; Scientists confirm that mysterious radio signals from outer space are not made by humankind

name to remember MOLONGLO TELESCOPE...

...The Molonglo telescope was re-engineered to be able to gather more data.

...The telescope is able to produce 1000 TB of data every day.

Professor Anne Green of the University of Sydney added, “it is very exciting to see the University of Sydney’s Molonglo telescope making such important scientific discoveries by partnering with Swinburne’s expertise in supercomputing.”

Still, the stutter “heard” from the star KIC 8462852 would need an almost inconceivably-sized alien megastructure. The only reason a civilization would need to build a structure that size, scientists said, is for interstellar travel....

ther ya go...another lead of interest to quite a few here on ATS

Interesting, thanks!

YouTube - What is the Gateway Spaceport?

Building The Gateway will not – must not – be the job of any one country. It must be a global endeavor, created by the will of people everywhere: People who believe in the future, who see beyond the constraints of small spacecraft and small space stations, for a small number of incredibly wealthy individuals. The Gateway will be built for those who believe that everyone: rich, middle-class or poor, should have the opportunity to visit or work in space.

Home page: The Gateway Foundation.

“We’ve been asked to help the Space Council understand and explore the nexus between space science across its various disciplines — astrophysics, heliophysics, planetary science and Earth science — with human exploration in the upcoming era of returning to the moon,” said David Thompson, founder and former chief executive of Orbital ATK.

That includes potential applications of the Gateway that NASA plans to develop in cislunar space. The agency has already been looking at potential scientific applications of the Gateway, including hosting a conference on the topic in February 2018. The Space Studies Board also plans to hold a workshop later this year on the role of human space exploration supporting science.

spacenews.com, Jan. 9, 2019 - Space council advisory group to study role of human space exploration supporting science.

a reply to: cmdrkeenkid

Wow, amazing amount of information! Thank you for sharing all those links. It doesn't hurt to se what the world around us is doing regarding space exploration. It's an immense universe out there...

The selection of these links is impressive. It is nice to meet people devoted to their work and topic. I am waiting for new links.