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

Astrolab Time Lapse Movies

• Current Sky Chart for Durham from Heavens-Above (New)
Current Sky Chart for Durham from Heavens-Above (Old)
• Charts from Alan Pickup's Starwatch series in The Guardian
• 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
• David Malin's images of the Constellations, i.e. The Plough, Orion
• The Plough, Leo, Gemini, Cassiopeia, Perseus, Orion
• Finding other constellations from the Plough (Ursa Major, the Big Dipper)
• Proper Motion of the stars in Ursa Major
• Big Dipper proper motion
• 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
• "The Dunhuang chinese sky: a comprehensive study of the oldest known star atlas" by Bonnet-Bidaud, J.M., Praderie, F. & Whitfield, S.

• Small-angle approximation
• Star counts: Why for the simple model  N(m) ∝ 10^0.6m
• 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
• Solar and Sidereal Days
• Durham allsky movie (2018-Oct-09)
• 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
• Vega and Deneb tracking pass Durham Cathedral
• Skywatcher's Guide to the Moon
• Moon impact! NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter finds new craters
• Lunar Sidereal and Synodic Months
• Eclipses Online
• Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 August 21
• NASA Goodard Understanding Lunar Eclipses
• Antonio Cidadao's Lunation Movie
• NASA Goddard's Moon Phase 2019
• 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
• Mercury retrograde, explained ...
• 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, NOAA Auroral Forecast, Spaceweather.com, Current Space Weather, Auroral Activity Sighting Reports (map)
• Steve Barnes' Aurora Movie
• Stephane Guisard's All-sky Aurora above Great Slave Lake
• Durham Aurora 2014 Feb 27
• SOHO movie of Comet Neat V1 passing the Sun
• SOHO movie of the great storm of October 2003
• Peekskill meteor
• Chelyabinsk meteor (movie)
• Geminids in 2007
• Where are the Voyagers?
• 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
• Copernicus, in Conversation with God, (1872)
• Solar-System Evolution: The Nice Model
• MAVEN
• Erik Wernquist's Wanderers
• Erik Wernquist's New Horizons
• Five Ways Mariner 4 Changed Mars Exploration
• Navigating an asteroid field
• A Guide to Gale Crater
• NASA Has Been Exploring Mars Every Day For The Last 20 Years
• An ordinary day on Mars
• BBC Series: The Planets
• Cassini's Grand Finale
• Cassini-Huygens Titan
• Saturn's Rings May Be Ancient After All
• US Navy grabs old-fashioned sextants amid hacker attack fears
• Air Canada pilot mistakes Venus for a plane ...
• The Kuiper Belt
• Mike Brown's lecture on the Grand Tack
• Pluto and Beyond - Nova Documentary 2019

• Stellarium is a 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

• 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

apparent magnitude, autumnal equinox, celestial_equator, celestial poles, celestial sphere,
circumpolar stars, conjunction, constellations, ecliptic, equatorial coordinate system,
declination, diurnal motion, earthshine, equinox, great circle, horizon coordinate system,
hour angle, inferior planets, latitude, meridian, moon, naked eye, night sky, occulation,
pole star, precession, right ascension, seasons, solar time, sidereal time, summer solstice,
superior planets, vernal equinox, winter solstice, zenith
Aristarchus On the Sizes and Distances

• AstroLab Weather links

• Bob O'Connell's page Motions in the Sky & Coordinate Systems
• Sten Odenwald's Ask the Astronomer
• NASA's Eclipse Web Site
• 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?
• 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

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