All the following listed sites are checked regularly. However, the constantly changing nature of the internet means some sites may alter after we have visited them.
Sheffield Astronomical Society is not responsible for the content of external websites. These links will open in a new browser window.
[notice title=”A Selection of Astronomy and Space Resources”]Websites
[list type=star_list]- AstroBuySell UK – The UK’s Largest Trading Place for New & Used Telescopes and Accessories
- BBC Stargazing Live website – full of information and links
- Society for Popular Astronomy – a great place to start in astronomy
- Google Moon – This tool is an exciting new way to explore the story of the Apollo missions, still the only time mankind has set foot on another world.
- Heavens-Above – find out when you can see the International Space Station and many other satellites coming over your town. This link is set for Sheffield Town Hall so to be more accurate you will need to register your own location.
- Hubblesite – all the pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, most of which you can download as desktop backgrounds or print out and stick on your wall.
- NASA Kids club – a fantastic place to learn about space
- Skymaps – download and print the latest map of the sky. The page shows you the positions of the planets and gives suggestions of objects to see for each month.
- Galaxy Zoo – help classify galaxies.
- Space Weather – Solar weather.
- The Nine Planets – explore the planets on this site.
- Bob the Alien’s Tour of the Solar System
- The Andromeda Observatory – a great website by one of our members.
- Myths & Legends of the constellations.
- Telescope Eyepiece Calculator – a tool to determine technical characteristics of different telescopes and eyepieces.
- Amateur Astrophotography E-Magazine – a e-magazine targeted at the astrophotography community.
- The UK Astronomy Directory – The world’s longest established Variable Star observing group.
- British Astronomical Association Variable Star Section – A UK focused directory of astronomy related web-sites.
- American Association of Variable Star Observers – Discovering the Universe through variable stars.
Microsoft Windows Applications
[list type=star_list]- Stellarium – A free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
- Celestia – The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions.
- Cartes du Ciel (Skychart) – This program enables you to draw sky charts, making use of the data in many catalogs of stars and nebulae. In addition the position of planets, asteroids and comets are shown.
Missions
[list type=star_list]- Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) – Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes. In other words, its mission is to determine the planet’s habitability.
- New Horizons – Heading for Pluto.
- Cassini – NASA’s mission to Saturn.
- SOHO – an ESA/NASA spacecraft studying the Sun.
- Solar Dynamics Observatory – a NASA mission to study the Sun.