Astronomy Online, for Drake Elementary Brian Fields Astronomy and Physics Departments, U. Illlinois

Planet Earth

• you are here
• zoom out for the big picture: how's the weather today? in all her glory
• when it's dark but not night: solar eclipses!
  • partial, over the Golden Gate,
  • total--over Turkey: zoom, time lapse
  • high-res annular, composite of rare hybrid event
  • diamond ring
  • Moon at closest and farthest (perigee/apogee)
  • eclipse path animation
  • looking down on an eclipsed Earth

A Map of the Starry Night: the Celestial Sphere

• diagram of the celestial sphere
• sketch of a single star's path in 1 day
• Star trails
  • in the Southern Hemisphere
  • in the northern hemisphere
  • where was this taken? (What latitude?) answer
  • how long were the exposures in these images?

Craters and the History of the Moon

• Compare Earth vs Moon surfaces
• zoom in with Google Moon
• but what about here?
  • Manicouagan, Clearwater Lakes, Canada
  • Tunguska, Siberia
  • Meteor crater, Arizona
  • Cosmic calamity! ... and evidence

Other Planets in the Solar System

• solar system orbit viewer
• inner solar system objects in real time
• Mars and Maritan surface
• Jupiter
• Saturn and rings
• Neptune
• Pluto, and its other dwarf planet neighbors and Eris; Sedna, and 2003 EL61, all hangin' in the Kuiper belt

Planets Around Other Stars

• finding planets: why it's so hard!
• the trick: star wobble
• current lineup of planets around other stars
• the future: terrestrial planet finder

The Sun Today: Real-Time Images!

• the photographer: NASA's SOHO satellite
• real-time movies! gif, mpeg
  
• Spectacular solar storms! similar storms (solar flares) also generate radio waves; these can be converted into audio (like your radio does all the time) and then you can hear them!
• movies of the Sun's disk notice the spots and the spin!

Life Cycles of Stars

• birth
• childhood
• old age
• death: this way or this way

Black Holes

• Size, recipe, and surgeon general's warning
• Black holes from afar, near, and inside
• Black hole digestion

Evidence for Black Holes

• X-ray binaries: Cygnus X-1
• Milky Way center:
  • Radio overview
  • The power of adaptive optics
  • Stellar orbits: Munich group, UCLA group, plot
• other galaxies
  • active galaxies: M87; AGN gallery
  • gravitationally lensed quasar: the Einstein cross
  • quasar and host galaxies
  • supermassive black holes
  • an important clue? a binary supermassive black hole pair!
• Gravitational radiation
  Hulse & Taylor's award-winning binary pulsar
  gravity-wave observatories: LIGO
  

"Google Sky": The Solan Digital Sky Survey

• survey explained here
• wander the sky
• click on objects to see what they are and to get data

Movies, Animations, and Simulations

• Apollo 15 hammer and feather gravity experiment, the movie: quicktime, mov and mpeg, quicktime, with links to transcript
• retrograde motion java demonstrator
• solar system viewer java simulation
• Planetary motion (Kepler's laws): one java simulation and another
• phases of the Moon: java simulator, self-test

Useful Links

• the invaluable Astronomy Picture of the Day
• solar motion throughout the year: the analemma
• solar system clearinghouse: nineplanets.org
• Google Earth, Moon

Other Resources

• Astronomy picture of the Day
• Astronomy 100 (Spring 2003): lecture pages with links
• Astronomy For Teachers: lecture pages with links

This page: www.astro.uiuc.edu/~bdfields/Drake.html