I've been interested in all things astronomical and cosmological since I was a little kid. Now that I live in Morpeth with a decent dark sky from the back of our house I bought an 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (a Meade LX10) in 1998. Since then I've been slowly clocking up Messier and NGC objects as clear nights allow.
Moon's current phase Astronomy Weather Forecasts for the UK For software I use Redshift 5 and skyglobe the most.
As for books, I have very much enjoyed these as listed at the bottom of the page.
If you have the patience for a big download then click here to download the zip file (7.6MB) of a popular "Beginning Amateur Astronomy" talk that I gave at work on the 12th December 1999. Don't forget to read the README file once you have unzipped the download. The file takes about 40 minutes to download with a 56K modem.
New!
Click here for some photos of the solar eclipse I took from Morpeth (just with a digital camera).The Internet is a great place for those interested in astronomy and cosmology. There is no point in me attempting to emulate the excellent work that is already out there, so here are some links and a few of my favourite places to visit.
Links for beginners
UK links
General
Software (much for free!)
Books
UK links
- Information for Beginning Astronomers
- Backyard Astronomy
- The Telescope Review Web Site
- Bad Astronomy Rid your self of misconceptions...
General
- Astronomy.org.uk In progress, but looks promising.
- Yahoo's links
- UK Sites of Astronomical Interest
- The British Astronomical Association
- Royal Observatory Greenwich, London
- Astronomy Now
- AstroWeb: Astronomy/Astrophysics on the Internet Links to everything astronomical.
- Introduction to Cosmology from the Goddard Space Flight Center.
- Professor Wright's Cosmology Tutorial
- Dublin Night Sky Observer Pages are aimed at (primarily European) amateur and armchair astronomy and space buffs.
- Sky and Telescope
- The Sky Astounding site!! (be patient while it loads...) - You must try the sky lab!
- 3-D Starmaps (get your red & green glasses ready)
- Aurora info and more aurora info. Also see here for more polar satellite images.
- Control a telescope
- Search for aliens with SETI@home
- Visit the Anglo-Australian observatory
- Find out about the top unsolved mysteries of the universe from Hawking and his mates
- Find out about black holes
- Fall into a black hole
- Cosmos in a Computer Witness the birth of the cosmos, watch the universe unfold, all from your desktop.
- Nice moon site
- A great moon site Takes a long time to load - but worth it!
- Find out if we are all going to die suddenly
- Visit the planets
- Nice pics of Earth
- Have all your questions answered
- The Apollo missions
- NASA photo gallery
- Spacewatch Space exploration on Internet TV
- The Astronomy Net Astronomy resources, searchable forums and searchable lists of organizations providing astronomy services.
- Society for Popular Astronomy
Thanks to Claes Schibler from Stockholm for pointing out some of these to me!
- Starcalc "StarCalc is the fastest professional astronomy planetarium & star mapping program for Windows 95/98/NT today." (Freeware)
- skyglobe
- Greg Roberts' collection of software. Grab it quickly as his page may not be available for much longer!
- Astronomy programs part of Astronomy resources on the Net
- Sky and telescope software resources Enormous!
- Freeware, Shareware and Public Domain Astronomy software Huge!!
- A software list from the planetary society
- Softseek's Astronomy pages
Top space books I have read. This is just a selection of those that I have most enjoyed:
Good on-line booksellers include
- Amazon.com
- Barnes & Noble
- The Internet bookshop
- Amazon.co.uk
- Waterstones
Observing
- Exploring the night sky with Binoculars Patrick Moore
ISBN 0-521-55538-8- Seeing Stars The Night Sky Through Small Telescopes. Chris Kitchin and Robert W. Forrest
ISBN 3-540-76030-X- Norton's 2000.0 Star Atlas and Reference Handbook. Edited by Ian Ridpath
ISBN 0-582-03163-X
General
- Powers of ten About the relative size of things in the universe.
Philip Morrison and Phylis Morrison.
ISBN 0716760037- Galaxies Superb pictures and explanations
Timothy Ferris
ISBN 0-941434-02-8- The Nature of the Physical world An old classic.
Sir Arthur Eddington- Perfect Symmetry The search for the beginning of time.
Heinz R. Pagels
ISBN 0-14-015826-X- Dreams of a final theory The search for the fundamental laws of nature
Steven Weinberg
ISBN 0-09-922391-0- Hyperspace A scientific odyssey through the 10th Dimension
Michio Kaku
ISBN 0-19-286189-1
Magazines
- Astronomy Now For all things UK.
- Sky and Telescope
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