Web Power Tools, for Amateur Astronomy, from Professional Astronomy

In other words, AstroWeb is an Internet search engine specifically for astronomy. Just type in the name of the person, object, instrument, observatory, spacecraft, or whatever else you want, and AstroWeb will give links to astronomical web pages that mention it.

The web page I use most in my day-to-day research is:

and specifically,

Type in the name of an astronomical object, an author name, or words in the title or text of a paper, in the appropriate boxes. ADS will list the scientific papers on the specified object, or by the specified author. These papers are in a wide range of popular magazines and journals, refereed and unrefereed. (The referees are other professional astronomers, asked by the journals to read the manuscripts carefully, check for errors, and report on whether the papers should be published. The refereeing process isn't infallible, referees being human, but it does help the quality of many papers—at least, it has for several of mine!)

ADS can also search with keywords. These can yield long lists of papers, but ADS has logical functions for narrowing searches. ADS lists go surprisingly far back in time. A search of unrefereed or refereed papers using the name "Struve" listed some 440 items. Most of these were by Otto Struve, including 167 popular articles he published between 1942 and 1963, as well as 146 refereed papers in the Astrophysical Journal. However, the oldest reference turned up in the the general search on "Struve" was an 1845 book by his great-grandfather, Friedrich Struve. ADS also has page images of many refereed journals, since 1980.

Another web resource I use nearly every day is the SIMBAD astronomical database. SIMBAD stands for Set of Identifications, Measurements, and Bibliography for Astronomical Data. It's run by the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS, Strasbourg), in France.

SIMBAD contains information for about one million objects, including 3.3 million identifiers, over 1.5 million observational measurements, and 1.4 million bibliographical references. It's great for cross-references, for example if you know an object's Messier number, but want to know its NGC number, or if you know a star's SAO or HD number, but want to know its HR number---or name. SIMBAD also lists nearly all papers in refereed and other journals, as far back as 1950. It can search on an object's name you type in, or by coordinates: the default search radius is 10 arcminutes. It used to be one had to get a user account to use SIMBAD interactively, but now it's available on the web:

SIMBAD can also be used in batch mode, for complex or long searches.

In the 1960s, a good finding chart of an important object was almost enough to justify a publication by itself. Things have improved since, with:

SkyView makes finding charts. All you need to do is to type in an object's name. SkyView is connected to SIMBAD, and if SIMBAD can match this name, it finds the object's coordinates and returns this to SkyView. You may also type coordinates directly into SkyView.

SkyView then returns a square image, of default size 8.5 arcminutes on a side. Skyview includes sky maps in many wavelengths of light, from radio to gamma rays: selecting "Digitized Sky Survey" will show images in visible light. These reach fainter than 20th magnitude in the red (E) or green (J) bands. (The limiting magnitude varies from field to field, but detailed calibrations are available). These images were scanned from wide-field photographs, taken during the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, and by the Southern Sky Survey, carried out by the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh and Anglo-Australian Observatory. No more fumbling through the library for finding charts!

Try it yourself. Bring up the Basic interface, and type the Messier or NGC number of one of your favorite deep-sky objects, such as NGC 891 or M13 (and be sure to select "Digitized Sky Survey"). You can download the images in gif, a well-known image format that doesn't take up much space, or more detailed images in FITS format, the standard image format in professional astronomy, or even in compressed FITS, which can be uncompressed with the UNIX "uncompress" program. To fit large objects, such as M42 or M31, into the frame, you need to reset the image size, and such frames can take a while to load, regardless of image format. Still, SkyView's potential is clear, especially for owners of CCDs.

Space Telescope Science Institute runs a similar page, at:

They also distribute CD-ROMs of the sky images, although there is a charge for them.

Hubble Space Telescope of course has a web page, of interest to users and general public alike, at:

They of course have a splendid image archive, press releases to go with it, and many pages of educational activities.

Most other space missions run their own pages, too. There is insufficient space here to list them all, but you can generally find them by typing the mission name or abbreviation into AstroWeb, two examples being Mars Pathfinder and AXAF.

An astonishingly large list of current, planned, and past missions, maintained by the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters, is:

If you like building models of spacecraft, for example, this is where you can easily get pictures of scads of them.

Since NASA is a government agency, the data from its spacecraft normally go into the public domain. Anyone can access these data, often consisting of quite tasty images that were glanced at once, but were since forgotten. Even now, years after many of the missions, these space datasets could stand serious look-throughs. Patient amateurs, unbothered by imminent grant proposal deadlines, could really excel at this.

For searching through the databases from spacecraft, there is:

There are whole astronomical data centers that do this, too. One is run at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's center for space science:

NSSDC acts as a clearinghouse for data from astrophysics, space physics, solar physics, and planetary missions. Of greatest interest to the general public user is:

Another NASA Goddard page that I use is the archive of astronomical catalogs, at:

This provides catalogs of all manner of astronomical objects, whether stars, galaxies, or whatever else.

ADC pages that you, gentle reader, may particularly enjoy include:

You can also find resources for different parts of the spectrum:

Radio astronomy, after all, was pioneered by an amateur, Grote Reber. Like him, many amateur radio astronomers build their own instruments, both simple and complex. Many could make fine use of the wide-field FIRST survey, being done with the Very Large Array. FIRST is avaliable with SkyView; they has also been making their maps available as soon as they get them, at:

Most amateurs observe in the optical, though. NOAO therefore deserves mention, partly because of IRAF, its free software for CCD imaging. IRAF has been ported to a wide variety of platforms, including personal computers:

NOAO also runs a superb image archive, at:

They have other public outreach activities, too, including tours and observing programs for novice and advanced amateurs at Kitt Peak, Arizona:

A solar resource, by Lockheed, has links to many other solar pages:

Another fine solar resource, with links to others, is the Solar Data Analysis Center (SDAC), run by NASA:

This includes current solar images from the SOHO and Yokoh spacecraft, as well as several ground-based solar observatories, and links to many others, at:

This is one of my favorite pages. It's fascinating to watch sunspots march, prominences leap, and coronal streamers dance, from day to day. It's quite safe, too, since all you need do is look at your computer screen!

SDAC also has archives from the Solar Max and other space missions. The Solar max images are another example of a dataset that could stand good, patient, unhurried look-throughs by serious amateurs: there's no telling what they could turn up. Solar max was especially good at observing solar flares.

Solar flares and sunspots are only two small parts of space weather. For current conditions in the solar wind, coronal holes, geomagnetic storms and aurorae, as well as meteor rates and asteroids, see:

An outstanding eclipse page, by Fred Espenak, is:

Professional astronomers publish in refereed journals. As soon as their papers are accepted, they send advance copies ("preprints") to:

Nearly all the professional journals have their own web pages, with which one can find subscription information, instructions for authors, costs for publishing in these journals, etc. Rather than listing all their pages separately, the following page has links to many journals:

A list of astronomy meetings is compiled by Liz Bryson of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, at:

A famous source of fast-breaking news, of anything in the sky that varies or moves (including, but not limited to, novae, supernovae, gamma ray bursts, comets, asteroids), and much else, is:

However, before sending them reports of any comets you discover, be sure *first* to check whether your object has any motion. *Also,* run their:

Participation by serious, careful amateurs has always been welcome, and is increasing. Unfortunately, since anyone can send e-mail these days, so is the number of false alarms. The directors of CBAT do not take kindly to these---nor do the thousands of professional and amateur observers who subscribe to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Circulars that CBAT issues by e-mail. False alarms almost never get past the directors of CBAT, but their jobs are hard enough: be sure to do both those checks before reporting!

Two resources specifically for variable stars, run by professional astronomers but largely composed of amateur observations, are:

In both, professional observers organize amateur observing campaigns. These often produce useful science if done carefully, even with modest equipment. So do the following:

The following page, by NASA's Office of Space Science, lists resources useful for amateurs:

A more extensive listing is run by Space Telescope Science Institute:

The web has many utilities for observing. Accurate time is kept at:

This includes Local Standard or Daylight Time for U.S. time zones, Universal Time, and Local Apparent Sidereal Time.

The U.S. Naval Observatory has a number of other resources for timekeeping, including:

Several handy observing tools have been developed by the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) mission. These include:

Phases of the Moon can be found with John Walker's:

There are many fine weather pages. One, with forecasts and current satellite and radar images immediately displayed, is:

Another, with all manner of satellite images, is:

Yet another, by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, is:

One I particularly like, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is the:

A weather page that can be customized to your site, and also contains astronomical data, is:

And of course, there are countless other pages by organizations and individual astronomers, many of them frighteningly useful. There's a whole Universe of information out there. Happy exploring!

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Dr. Ringwald is on the faculty at California State Unversity, Fresno. Check out his Hubble Space Telescope results, at:

Example 2. If you set your browser to SkyView (http://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov/skyview.html), select the "Basic" interface, select the "Digitized Sky Survey" in the "Survey" box, type "NGC 891" into the "Coordinates or Source" box, and click on "Submit", this image will be displayed, which you can download in gif, FITS, or compressed FITS image format. Try it yourself!

Example 3. Example output from ADS, in which the author modestly typed in his own name. Refereed papers only, of course!