Web Astronomy Resources for Teachers

Amazing Space: This is the Education Outreach part of the Hubble Space Telescope Web site. It includes activities for students, teacher guides, lesson plans, and classroom projects.

http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/eds/

Sky Almanac: McDonald Observatory provides an excellent written guide to the sky each month. The “Weekly Stargazing Tips” and “Moon Phases” calendars are in links on the left of this page and are also very useful.

http://stardate.org/nightsky/almanac/

The Nine 8 Planets: Great starting point for anything about any of the planets – “. . . an overview of the history, mythology, and current scientific knowledge of the planets, moons and other objects in our solar system.”

http://www.nineplanets.org/

Messier Catalog: A guide to the 110 most frequently viewed star clusters, nebula, and galaxies – authoritative data and images.

http://www.seds.org/messier/data3.html

Teachers Guide to the Moon: Useful information, lesson plans, and classroom activities for studying the Moon.

http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov/education/teacher/

Heavens Above: When is the space shuttle passing over your community? How about other satellites? This site also provides full sky charts, and more.

http://heavens-above.com/

Lunar Atlas: I especially like this - very useful tool for planning, observing, or identifying what caught your eye in an observing session.

http://www.inconstantmoon.com/atlas.htm

Astronomy in the classroom: Links to several good classroom activities can be found at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

http://www.astrosociety.org/education/activities/activities.html

Atlas of the Universe: Good place to start to get a grip on the big picture. Their description: "This web page is designed to give everyone an idea of what our universe actually looks like. There are nine main maps on this web page, each one approximately ten times the scale of the previous one. The first map shows the nearest stars and then the other maps slowly expand out until we have reached the scale of the entire visible universe. "

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/

Size of things: Beautifully understated title leads to a mind-bending web site. Go there. Sit patiently. And watch. No words needed – the message is graphic and it keeps getting better and better.

http://sizeofworldse.ytmnd.com/

Dark Matter: Go here for an overview of recent research and discoveries about dark matter as determined using the Hubble Space Telescope.

http://tinyurl.com/2l9gfg

Dark Energy: To learn more about dark energy, visit this portion of the Hubble site. “The Universe we can see – the universe we can touch – is only a tiny fraction of the universe that exists.”

http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/dark_energy/

Religion, Science and the Cosmic Time Scale: Some ndividuals feel their faith is in conflict with what science tells us about such basic issues as the age of the universe. Here’s why astronomers think the universe is about 13.5 billion years old.

http://tinyurl.com/2tctbs