Users

Department of Physics

User's Guide to the Night Sky

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day

L1 User's Guide to the Night Sky: Resources

Star Charts, etc

Current Sky Chart for Durham from Heavens-Above
Charts from Alan Pickup's Starwatch series in The Guardian
Charts from Skymapper

Star charts from www.skymaps.com (Note the charts are for 40 deg N!)
Star charts etc from www.skyviewcafe.com
Dr Jamie Love's Getting your Bearings
Nick Risinger's Photopic-sky-survey
Real Time-Lapse Animations from Cosmotions
David Malin's images of the Constellations, i.e. The Plough, Orion
The Plough, Leo, Gemini, Cassiopeia, Perseus, Orion
Constellation Families
Finding other constellations from the Plough (Ursa Major, the Big Dipper)

Proper Motion of the stars in Ursa Major
Bright Stars: Achernar, Aldebaran, Algol, Alpha Cen, Altair, Arcturus, Betelgeuse, Canopus, Capella, Castor, Deneb, Pollux, Procyon, Regulus, Rigel, Sirius, Spica.
Satellite Visibility for Durham including ISS and Iridium Flares
Algol minimum times

Online Notes, Animations and Figures

Small-Angle Formula
The celestial sphere
Local Sidereal Time
The Ecliptic: the Sun's annual path on the celestial sphere
The movement of the sky over one sidereal day as seen from Durham
SBIG's fisheye lens all-sky movie
Time Lapse Sky Shows Earth Rotating Instead of Stars
The position of the midday sun as seen from Durham during the year
The daily track of Sun across the sky at the time of the equinox (Durham)
The daily track of Sun across the sky at the time of the summer solstice (Durham)

The daily track of Sun across the sky at the time of the winter solstice (Durham)
The daily track of Sun across the sky at the time of the summer solstice (Latitude = +75°)

RA-Dec directions and motions as seen from Durham
John Thorstensen's Coordinates, Time and the Sky
Skywatcher's Guide to the Moon

Why the Moon crosses the meridian, on average, 50.5 minutes later each day?
Lunar Sidereal and Synodic Months
Eclipses Online
Antonio Cidadao's Lunation Movie
Anthony Ayiomamitis' impressive images of the 2008-Aug-16 Lunar Eclipse
Current positions of the Sun, Moon and planets
How to estimate the opposition (RA, Dec) position of a planet
Mercury Chaser's Calculator
Motions of the Inner Planets
Motions of the Inner Planets relative to a fixed Sun-Earth line
Mars 2003
Mars 2005
Mars 2007
The Wandering Stars
Apophis: the Friday 13th Destroyer. Predictions by Giorgini et al (2008)
Horizontal Plane and Day/Night
Animations from NAAP
Equinoxes, Solstices, Perihelion, and Aphelion, 2000-2020
The Equation of Time
AuroraWatch UK, OVATION Auroral Forecast, Spaceweather.com, Current Space Weather, Auroral Activity Sighting Reports (map)
SEC's Tips on Viewing the Aurora
Steve Barnes' Aurora Movie
SOHO movie of Comet Neat V1 passing the Sun
SOHO movie of the great storm of October 2003
Peekskill meteor
Geminids in 2007
All-sky map of the Milky Way (local copy) from www.atlasoftheuniverse.com
Stephane Guisard's flash animation of the "sky" from Paranal
Summer Triangle

Software

CyberSky is available on eight machines on the University's Networked PC service in Physics PC classroom (PH1H-647 to 654).
To access Start menu, Programs | Academic Software | Physics (special)
An evaluation version of CyberSky can be downloaded directly from http://www.cybersky.com
Stellarium is an alternative planetarium programme that is available Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX and and Linux. It is free and open source. Apparently "It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope."
Also recommended are the that apps are available for smart phones, e.g. Google Sky for Android and Star Walk for Iphone

Books

The introduction chapters of any good general astronomy book, e.g.
Chapters 1-3, 6 of "In Quest of the Universe" by Kuhn & Koupelis, (Jones & Barlett, 3rd Ed.)
Chapters 2, S1 of "The Cosmic Perspective" by Bennett et al. (Pearson, 3rd Ed.)
"How to identify (the) Night Sky" by Storm Dunlop & Will Tirion (Collins)
"Out of the Blue" by John Naylor (CUP)
"Practical Astronomy" by Peter Duffett-Smith (CUP, 3rd Ed.)
"The Ever-Changing sky: a Guide to the Celestial Sphere" by James B. Kaler (CUP)
"Observing the Universe" by Andrew J Norton, see Part 1, The Night Sky

Wikipedia Links

apparent magnitude

autumnal equinox

celestial_equator

celestial poles

celestial sphere

circumpolar stars

equatorial coordinate system

horizon coordinate system

inferior planets

right ascension

summer solstice

superior planets

winter solstice

Aristarchus On the Sizes and Distances

Weather

Highly Recommended Links

Bob O'Connell's page Motions in the Sky and Coordinate Systems
Sten Odenwald's Ask the Astronomer
NASA's Eclipse Home Page
The Messier Catalog
The Nine Planets
Monty Python's Astronomy Lesson
Martin J. Powell's Naked Eye Planets
Nick Strobel's Astronomy Notes including Astronomy Without a Telescope.
Current Solar Images
LASCO/EIT real time movies of the Sun
S & T Current Astronomical News
Buying Stars and Star Names
Inconstant Moon
S & T - Sky at a Glance
Hawaiian Astronomical Society's Constellation List
Chris Dolan's The Constellations and their Stars
Campaign for Dark Skies
NASA/JPL's solar system simulator - a spyglass on the cosmos
The Stellar Magnitude System
What Are Northern Lights?
SEC's Aurora (pdf)
Astronomy Answers
Les Cowley's Atmospheric Optics
Claus Tonderin's FAQ about Calendars
What is a Leap Second?
The World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness (Ugh!)
Where is M13? - A Three Dimensional Galactic Atlas
AstroLab Home Page

Physics Home Page

jrl