(Above) Latest solar images, from various telescopes and spacecraft. Click on them for more detail.
(Above) Latest solar images, from various telescopes and spacecraft. Click on them for more detail.
If you have trouble getting into Crawford at night: call my
office, x7135, and someone will come down and let you in. Campus security
(x8111) should also let you in, but sometimes doesn't. There's a security
phone halfway between Crawford and Skurla Aviation building, on the north
side; there's also a phone in Evans Library.
Links:
For review, from last semester:
Handout on The
Motions of the Planets.
Some general principles:
Some Rules and Hints for Teachers and Students
I'd like to encourage you all to participate in outside activities that help your careers. I will focus this class on current topics of interest and problems in Solar System science, particularly those you may find yourselves working on in the coming years. Another way to keep up with what's happening now that's quite painless, and is in fact fun and interesting, is to read the same popular magazines mentioned above, including Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, Mercury, The Planetary Report, New Scientist, Physics Today, and Scientific American. Although I recommend it, you need not subscribe to them: Evans Library should have subscriptions to all.
Some resources:
AstroWeb: A web page for finding other astronomy/space science web pages. In other words, an Internet search engine specifically for astronomy/space science.
Planetary Fact Sheets, by the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC)
The Nine Planets: A Multimedia Tour of the Solar System
The big list of current, planned, and past missions, maintained by NASA's
Entertaining but useless Gazeteer
of Planetary Nomenclature, by the International Astronomical Union.
Much more useful sources of space news:
NASA Space Science News. Subscribe for free, if you like.
FLORIDA TODAY Space Online's Space Today
Status reports for Ulysses, Voyager, and other planetary spacecraft, from JPL
My own Big Page of Links!
Gap In Stellar Dust Disk May Be Swept Out By Planet, a Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute press release by Alycia Weinberger et al.
For TNSS Ch. 10, The Moon:
Clementine (DSPSE)
spacecraft: Water Found on the Moon
Lunar Prospector Homepage:
Lunar Polar Ice Confirmed
So, you want to walk on the
Moon?
Lunar Data Support Idea that Collision Split Earth,
Moon
For TNSS Ch. 11, Mars:
JPL's Mars Exploration page
NSSDC's nearly exhaustive Mars page
NSSDC's Mars Chronology. Have a look especially at the bottom of the list.
What NASA Johnson Space Center has so far on Human Exploration of Mars
Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct Manned Mars Mission (design)
For TNSS Ch. 7, Mercury:
For TNSS Ch. 3, The Sun:
A fine solar resource, with links to others, is NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center's Solar Data Analysis Center (SDAC):
SDAC Home Page
Particularly interesting is SDAC's page of Current Solar Images, from SOHO, Yokoh, and many ground-based observatories, and a link to TRACE. Solar Structures Can Help Forecast Largest Solar Blasts
For TNSS Ch. 4, The Solar Wind:
SOHO Spacecraft Detects Source of High-Speed Solar
Wind
Check Today's Space Weather at The Lund Space Weather Center and at NOAA's Space Environment Center.
The Outer Solar System:
Three missions in the works: Europa Orbiter/Pluto-Kuiper Express/Solar Probe
David Jewitt's Kuiper Belt Page.
The Status of Pluto. Arrrrrrrrgh...
For TNSS Ch. 27, Life: Astrobiology Institute Tackles Basic Questions of Life
Last updated 2000 January 29.
Web page by Dr. Ringwald (
ringwald@astro.fit.edu )
Department of Physics and Space Sciences,
Florida Institute of Technology
