Tutorial resources for Astronomy 103 and 104

I have listed various resources by area. Many of these are part of  larger documents which might be useful to you at other times in the course. You can also consult the publishers website for our textbook, http://cw.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/chaissonat4/ , for additional  resources, as well as sample exam questions.

Table of Contents  

1. The Celestial Sphere and Coordinates
2. The Moon
3. Kepler's Laws
4. General Resources
5. Miscellaneous
6. Electomagnetic Radiation and Spectra
7. Stellar Properties
8. Interstellar Medium
9. Stellar Evolution
10. Galaxies
11. Cosmology
12. Life, the Universe, and Everything

The Celestial Sphere and Astronomical Coordinates

• Nick Strobel's Celestial Sphere Defined has  detailed descriptions and lots of helpful diagrams about the celestial sphere and coordinates. Be sure to look at the animation of how your view of the celestial shpere depends on your latitude.

The Moon

• Nick Strobel's Motions of the Moon is a very nice site giving detailed descriptions and diagrams about the phases of the Moon, eclipses, as well as motions and phases of the planets.
• Moon Phases is a nice animation of the moons orbit around the Earth and the corresponding phases.
• The Moon's Phase shows you the current phase of the moon.

Keplers Law's of Planetary Motion

• NASA's Observatorium has nice animations of Kepler's Three Laws of Planetary Motion.
• Bill Drennon's Kepler's Laws page has animations.
• Davidson's WebPhysics animations of Kepler's Laws.
• UBC's Interactive Mathematics has an interactive simulator for Kepler's Laws.

General

• Nick Strobel's Astronomy Notes contain all kinds of great descriptions and diagrams that you may find useful in this course. 
• Nick Strobel also has a nice short math review.
• The first few sections of NASA's Basics of Space Flight  tutorial workbook cover many of the topics we talk about in class (e.g. astronomical coordinates, the celestial sphere, Kepler's Laws, tidal forces, etc.) This site has fill-in-the-blank questions with answers.

Misc. Cool Sites:

• John Walker's Earth and Moon Viewer. This is a really nice site which shows you views of the daylight parts of Earth and other cool things.

Electromagnetic Radiation and Spectra:

• On this part of KSU's Visual Quantum Mechanics site  you can interactively create emission spectra
• NASA Observatorium summary of the electromagnetic spectrum
• a review of atomic structure and spectra
• Once again, Nick Strobel has a great site on spectra and electromagnetic radiation

Stellar Properties:

• Hertzbrug-Russel Diagram and other stellar properties
• Spectral clasification
• Stellar Properties from Nick Strobel, including:
• Binary Star Systems from U. Tenn
• Cool interactive simulation of binary star systems. Check this one out! It lets you enter different parameters of the binary system and see what happens!

Interstellar Medium:

• The Interstellar Medium from UNH
• Nick Strobel's Interstellar Medium
• The Interstellar Medium from U. Tenn
• Types of Nebulae from Bill Arnett's   Web Nebula

Stellar Evolution:

• A Star is Born, A virtual tour through stellar formation
• Life Story of a Star from Lake Afton Public Observatory is a nice summary of stellar evolution with pictures!
• Lives and Deaths of Stars from Nick Strobel

Cosmology:

• NCSA's  "Cosmos in a Computer", especially the segments on:
• Cosmic Mystery Tour: an overview from the Big Bang to the present
• Our Heirarchical Universe: Hubble's Law, COBE and the Background Radiation, Dark Matter, and Large Scale Structure
• Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial

Life, the Universe, and Everything:

• NASA' s Timeline of the Universe