[Thales]

http://www.whfreeman.com/astronomy/

good place for science books... Their Starry Night program is quite simple but would at least helps you through the aprrehensive feeling of not knowing what your look at. It also updates off the web the daily coordinates of several interesting objects each night, for locations all over the globe.

http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Good place for WMAP data.

http://relativity.li...rms/search.html
Trove of stuff on relativity, it helps if you know roughly what you are looking for, and keep in mind that reading it on the web sometimes mean it has not been peer reviewed. Some of the ideas in here(^that link^) are misleading, but its still a very good challenge trying to grip some of the concepts layed out.

http://academics.ham.../resources.html
While at first a ghaslty sight to look at the links in the light green are a good place to start surfing to try and skim som knowledge off the information superhighway!


Have fun!

ps-> Alucard, I really approve of the forum software and color scheme...

[Martin]

Quote

http://academics.ham.../resources.html
While at first a ghaslty sight to look at the links in the light green are a good place to start surfing to try and skim som knowledge off the information superhighway!
..

Thales, thanks much for the link to Seth Major's green page of further QG links! It is a valuable concentration of good leads for gravity in general as well as QG. On my monitor it is a deep sort of green, a bit Robin Hoody but not by any means ghastly. Seth seems to be a neat guy and enthusiastic teacher, he has a paper explaining spin networks at around sophomore college level, or trying to, in basic terms without a lot of prep. Anyway, great link and you will add more to this sticky!

[Kedas]

If you want star maps and much more for any location and time you can try the following program:
http://www.starrynig...d&Submit=Search
http://www.starrynig...ownload-Win.zip (56MB)

a good graphics card with OpenGL driver is a must. (Geforce 4 or later)

to add stars to mag14 you can find them here. (just copy them in the right directory)
http://www.starrynig...kyardfull.shtml
You do need a serial number to make it work
You can get a 15 day trial key here:
http://www.starrynig...al_download.php
(if 15day's isn't long enough to test it there are places to get a less limited key)

BTW the program isn't really cheap but I like it.

[MadIce]

Hi Martin,

I started collecting links like that a while ago. This is what I came up with:

Universe.

That URL gives access to more than 50 links related to astronomy and cosmology.

Use the arrows at the bottom to browse to other topics - currently over 350 links.

[Alexa]

Hi Martin,

Here you have another 2 links :

http://www.astrobio.net/news/index.php

http://sci.esa.int/s.../area/index.cfm?...

I usually use space.com and NASA's site, but you already have them.

Alexa

[Martin]

Quote

Hi Martin,

Here you have another 2 links :

http://www.astrobio.net/news/index.php

...

Hello Alexa,
thanks for contributing the Astrobiology link, I was reading some of the articles and accidentally clicked on a picture of an earthlike planet and found myself in the midst of some kind of "terraforming" game or simulation.
could be intriguing. what you do influences the way the temperature and other conditions are going to go, you might get an iceage or a runaway greenhouse I guess
quite a few interesting topics at that site.

I couldnt get the European Space Agency link to work so I grubbed around and came up with this instead:
http://spdext.estec....x.cfm?fareaid=1

If you have some favorite NASA or space.com site, I see no harm in mentioning something you found there and reposting the link.
some goodies may get lost if nobody ever repeats them.

Any time you want to try your hand at organizing the Astronomy links here feel free (radical edward set the thread up and there is no official librarian, whatever that would mean)

[Alexa]

Hi Martin,

Sorry for that unhappy link.

I use MyNASA Home as you have the option to bookmark the articles you are interested in and save them in your account. If you go on www.nasa.gov and enter on the main site, you have the option to yours NASA. I found very useful to work this way with NASA's site.

On www.space.com you have the option to receive free e-mail news. So I do not need to access every time the main site as I get the new articles by e-mail.

I've checked for other links and lookie what I found :

http://fraise.univ-brest.fr/~kerrest/IDEI/Liens-nouveaux.html


Don't be scared for the French part. Go down on the page and you have all useful links on the world ! :-)

Please check it and tell me what you think about it.

Alexa

[Martin]

Quote

http://fraise.univ-brest.fr/~kerrest/IDEI/Liens-nouveaux.html


... Go down on the page and you have all useful links on the world ! :-)

Please check it and tell me what you think about it.

Alexa

what I think...it is a page from the IDEI which is the International Space Law Institute at the University of Brest (West Bretagne)

what I think? It is nice to have very international collection of links. there are links from the space agency of Finland (!) as well as India and Brazil and Japan and every other place. Canada too naturally!

It is also nice to have a collection of links in French language and from a different perspective.

Alexa, if you have the time and interest to organize pages of links for this little SFN board I do not see anybody stopping you from doing it. You and I have no official power to erase superfluous material but nevertheless one can always gather/organize/repost. And so, if you have any impulse to serve as a volunteer information specialist (bibliographer, links-editor) I must say that I would welcome it even though I personally am not part of the management here and have no official position.

[Martin]

Hey thales! you are in Australia! perhaps your neighbors will be able to see that clumsy rock Toutatis that is trying to hit us
but keeps missing
and will be in Centaurus on 29 September

Toutatis comes from the Comic Book of Asterix, which must be familiar to
Alexa since she is French-speaker and undoubtably knows the classics.

You thales could also organize the Astronomy links, if Alexa does not want to do it, or wants help. You have already contributed a lot of good ones.
As there get to be more links, someone should do it and i do not care who.

[Alexa]

Martin,

I'll do my best to help you, but I have to confess something. I'm not a specialist in astronomy. I'm only an amateur who believes there is life out there into the space and I like to read whatever I can found to prove that. I do have experience as a documentation coordinator in a pharmaceutical company.

Oh, that's for sure I know Asterix !:D

What exactly do you have in mind with these links ? Do you want to use them as information source for the forum ? I thought it was only a personal interest.

Alexa

[Alexa]

Ups, I've almost forgot about X prize competition on www.xprize.org

If you have the time to check this link, you realise the competition gets really hot.

The Romanian team has set the launch date for Sept. 8.
On Sept. 29th SpaceShipOne will have its first flight with 3 persons on bord. The Canadian Da Vinci team announced its first launch attempt on Oct 2nd 2004.

As I think you already know, the X Prize Foundation is a non-profit organization and sponsors a competition between private international teams to build a low cost and effective craft for space tourism.

[Martin]

Quote

... I do have experience as a documentation coordinator in a pharmaceutical company.

Oh, that's for sure I know Asterix !:D

What exactly do you have in mind with these links ? Do you want to use them as information source for the forum ? I thought it was only a personal interest.

Alexa

I had a hunch you might have some librarian skills.
Also a thorough knowledge of Asterix is essential for anyone who boasts of civilized accomplishment.
I have nothing in mind besides the possible usefulness to people at this forum. Radical Edward had the idea to make this a "sticky" (see the first couple of posts). You can do as much or as little as you feel like doing or as you think is called for. A casual anarchy can also be beautiful.

I want to focus more on the Quantum Gravity links (see the QG thread in the SFN Quantum forum)

A general remark about link libraries: I am always forgetting where I put links. I like to have somewhere to look. I tend to find other posters words
more interesting and believable when they offer links to online sources which corroborate what they are saying. I assume other people expect the same of me. It raises the level of discussion to have a bunch of links handy, even if they only rarely get used.

You are very nice to talk with me about this and show interest in helping.
Now let us talk about more interesting stuff:

Quote

... I'm only an amateur who believes there is life out there into the space and I like to read whatever I can found to prove that...

Yes, this is a very real possibility and an intriguing prospect. I applaud your belief.
And even if there is no other life nearby it would be interesting to plant some. If we could find a potentially fertile planet.

[Martin]

Dark matter is an issue
these people made what they think is a colored map of the dark matter density in a cluster of galaxies, it helps to hold the cluster together.
help explains the gravitational lensing of things behind the cluster whose light is bent by it
helps explain how the individual galaxies can be moving randomly pretty fast and still stay grouped
http://sci.esa.int/s...fobjectid=33508

there is the map
the dark matter is in blue and the other stuff in white
the blue is imagined and superimposed on the real photograph

there is a technical paper that goes with this
A WIDE FIELD HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE STUDY OF THE CLUSTER CL0024+1654 AT Z = 0.4 II: THE CLUSTER MASS DISTRIBUTION Jean-Paul Kneib, Patrick Hudelot, Richard S. Ellis, Tommaso Treu, Graham P. Smith, Phil Marshall, Oliver Czoske, Ian Smail & Priya Natarajan
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0307299
or alternatively
http://www.astro.cal...24/CL0024II.pdf

a further paper by Jean-Paul Kneib about mapping dark matter by observing lensing by a cluster of galaxies
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0406282
(Kneib is at the Midi-Pyrennee Observatory and also Caltech)
see especially figure 3 here, it is like "X-ray vision" of the dark matter
residing in a cluster of galaxies---funnylooking

index to more of popular press release
http://sci.esa.int/s...fobjectid=33507

[Alexa]

WOW Martin,

I have checked the quantum gravity and you have quite a collection of links there.

In my opinion, we can let all the quantum gravity together (if I can find other links, I'll just add them there) and continue with astronomy links (more general information) here. Once we have a good data base, we'll be able to re-organize them to make an easier navigation through it.

Alexa

[Alexa]

Hi Thales,

I really like your notes about the links you gave earlier.

I'll try to find as many useful links as I can. Please feel free to add your comments on it.

Thanks,

Alexa :-)

[Severian]

Quote

Dark matter is an issue

Very true. The 5th International Workshop on the Identification of Dark Matter is on in Edinburgh next week.

[Alexa]

NOTE :

The following post is a summary of all the links I could find for this thread. As I consider this as a team work, don't be suprised if you recognize your participation here.

Please feel free to comment the presentation form. If you have any idea to improve it, just pick the thread and add whatever you consider useful for a future utilisation.

I saw there is a lot of interest on dark energy, so you can find some articles on Hot topics section. If you are interested in onother topic, let me know or add the link by yourself.

I do not consider this as a finished presentation. I'm sure there are other useful links on the net. :D

Thanks,


Alexa

[Alexa]

USEFUL LINKS

• Cosmology websites and FAQ given by SFN members
  
• Other sites and forums
  
• Magazines, Science & Technology
  
• Hot topics
  
• Vary articles available on the net

• Cosmology website and FAQ given by SFN members :

Ned Wright's cosmology website and FAQ. He teaches the undergrad and graduate level courses in cosmology at UCLA and is also one of the team in charge of the WMAP satellite observing the CMB.
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html

Wendy Freedman and Michael Turner's "Measuring and Understanding
the Universe" : http://arxiv.org/astro-ph/0308418

Note : a lot of good astronomy links are graphic rather than verbal, such as images from the HST and computer animations, also Ned Wright has a calculator that lets you calculate from something's red shift how far away it is.



Here are good online cosmology calculators :
- Siobahn Morgan's :
http://www.earth.uni.edu/~morgan/aj...ogy/cosmos.html
and Ned Wright's :
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html
Professor Murphy's online calculator(Johns Hopkins) :
http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/support/tools/eqtogal.html


All you ever want to know about Nebulas:
http://astronomynotes.com/evolutn/s1.htm
http://blackskies.com/neb101.htm
http://observe.arc.nasa.gov/nasa/sp...h_contents.html




Here is a nice free star chart that comes out every month and it also comes with a list of objects to look for with binoculars - a large telescope: http://www.skymaps.com/

A good place for science books... Their Starry Night program is quite simple but would at least help you through the apprehensive feeling of not knowing what your look at. It also updates off the web the daily coordinates of several interesting objects each night, for locations all over the globe : http://www.whfreeman.com/astronomy/

Good place for WMAP data : http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Trove of stuff on relativity, it helps if you know roughly what you are looking for, and keep in mind that reading it on the web sometimes mean it has not been peer reviewed. Some of the ideas in here (^that link^) are misleading, but its still a very good challenge trying to grip some of the concepts laid out : http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Forms/search.html

While at first a ghastly sight to look at the links in the light green are a good place to start surfing to try and skim some knowledge off the information superhighway! http://academics.hamilton.edu/physi.../resources.html



If you want star maps and much more for any location and time you can try the following program(A good graphics card with OpenGL driver is a must. (Geforce 4 or later) :
http://www.starrynight.com/support/...d&Submit=Search
http://www.starrynight.com/download...ownload-Win.zip (56MB)

To add stars to mag14 you can find them here. (just copy them in the right directory)
http://www.starrynight.com/en/backyardfull.shtml
You do need a serial number to make it work
You can get a 15 day trial key here:
http://www.starrynight.com/digitald...al_download.php
(if 15day's isn't long enough to test it there are places to get a less limited key)



http://www.extrasolar.net catalogue of extra solar planets including minimum mass, distance, and system



http://www.superstringtheory.com/ So what is string theory? For that matter, what the heck are elementary particles? Check out online courses. Black holes. History. Cosmology. Mathematics



http://www.bell-labs.com/org/physicalsciences/projects/darkmatter/darkmatter.html

Bell Laboratories physical sciences research

http://www.fourmilab...ew/vplanet.html

• Other sites and forums :

Time travel Portal – an open discussion on time travel : http://timetravelportal.com/viewtopic.php?t=294



Amateur astronomy and telescope building forum:

http://www.njnightsky.com/



Futura Science Generation ; sub-forum Sciences de l’Univers (French) :

http://www.futura-sciences.com/

Agence Spatiale Européenne:
http://www.esrin.esa.it/

Etats Unis: NASA
http://www.nasa.gov
http://www.space.com/
Agence spatiale Russe http://www.rosaviakosmos.ru/english/eindex.htm

• Magazines, Science & Technology:

http://www.astronomy.com/



http://www.astrobio.net/news/

• Hot topics :

DARK ENERGY :



- Dark Energy: Astronomers Still 'Clueless' About Mystery Force Pushing Galaxies Apart, by Andrew Chaikin

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/cosmic_darknrg_020115-1.html

- Astrophysics Challenged By Dark Energy Finding, By Ray Villard

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/darkenergy_folo_010410.html

- Galaxies Made of Nothing? New Theory of Mysterious Dark Matter
By Robert Roy Britt

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/dark_galaxies_010105-1.html

- Scientists Map Dark Matter, Prove Einstein Right, By Maia Weinstock

http://www.space.com/news/cosmic_shear_000512.html

- Scientists Closer to Solving Dark Matter Mystery, By Patricia Reaney

http://www.space.com..._matter_wg.html

- Feeling Around for Dark Matter By Matthew Fordahl -AP Science Writer

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/dark_matter_000405_wg.html

- 'Groundbreaking' Discovery: First Direct Observation of Dark Matter
By Robert Roy Britt

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/missing_matter_found_010322-1.html



- Understanding Dark Matter and Light Energy, By Robert Roy Britt

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/dark_matter_sidebar_010105.html





BLACK HOLES :



- Black Holes Could Be Major Power Source, By Deborah Zabarenko

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/blackholes_energy_wg.html

Several articles about black holes, most recent stories at top

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/headlines-4.html

• Vary articles available on the net :

Here you have a good link which is a star map with the Microwave Background dipole temperature variation superimposed

http://aether.lbl.gov/www/projects/u2/



Here's some pedagogical links for cosmology:

This article by Lineweaver (he was one of the team in charge of COBE
an earlier CMB satellite observatory) The second link has a PDF version that is more readable but takes more time to download.
Lineweaver's essay has been made into a chapter of a book now in press called "The New Cosmology" (world scientific 2004)
"Inflation and the Cosmic Microwave Background"
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/leve...r_contents.html
http://arxiv.org/astro-ph/0305179

New paper of Edward Witten in latest issue of Nature
link to online copy (for subscribers) is in the 3 June post of Woit's blog
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/
paper involves dark energy (which is an astronomy/cosmology topic!)
and concerns dark energy, the Higgs mass, and electroweak
symmetry breaking.

[Martin]

Hi Alexa, I see we have no animations.
there is an animation by someone at univ. colorado which shows what it would look like to someone who is falling into a black hole.
it might be amusing (not to actually do it! just watch) but I do not have the link

here are some Ned Wright animation links however.

balloon universe expands then collapses
http://www.astro.ucl...t/balloon0.html

why the particle horizon is 3X what you naively expect based on age of universe
http://www.astro.ucl...ons_outrun.html


microlensing (gravity bends light from things behind)
http://www.astro.ucl...crolensing.html

more lensing, by a cluster of galaxies
http://www.astro.ucl...er-lensing.html


How the bumps on the Microwave Background occurred: animation of what "Equal Power on All Scales" means
http://www.astro.ucl...MN-03/epas.html

I am happy to see you have already had some time to do some volunteer work on the links! Anything you have time and desire to to will be helpful.

About the animations. I suppose one of us (myself or thales or one of the others) could supply a little discussion to go with them. the Ned Wright animations are more useful if it is explained what they are showing.

[Alexa]

Hi Martin,

Here you have the animation link for the black holes :

http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/schw.shtml

I'll add the animations. It's a good idea.
Anyway, I have to do some changes. I saw the transfert from Word didn't work to well.

Alexa