Introduction to the Worldwide Web

In this lab you will learn how to:

print out documents you are reading with Netscape
contact you teaching assistant by e-mail from the Astronomy 201 homepage
find information on the Worldwide Web using the Alta Vista Search Engine

New vocabluary: Internet; Worldwide Web (or simply "the Web"); Netscape; Homepage; Electronic Mail (E-Mail); Search Engine; Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

There is nothing to turn in after class, but you will have to send your TA two e-mail messages (see below).

In the past few years, the Internet and the Worldwide Web have dramatically changed the way astronomers obtain information, send and receive data, and publish their results. Here are a few examples of this change:

Most of the observations with the University of Washington's new telescope on Apache Point in New Mexico is done remotely from the U.W. campus over the Internet.
All the data that has every been taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (and has become public one year after the observations) can be accessed over the Internet.
The most important American astronomical journal, the "Astrophysical Journal", will be fully electronic and on the Web in the fall of 1996. It is easy to predict that in just a few years all astronomical publications will primarily be read in their electronic version.

It is almost impossible to work as a professional astronomer and not be able to use these new tools. But the need to become familar with the Web is not limited to professional scientists. It is becoming more and more common to search the Web for things like finding and contacting possible employers/empoyees, reading newspapers and magazines from all over the world, getting schedules for movies and other events, etc. The homepage of "Astronomy 201: The Universe and the Origin of Life" will be an integral part of the course. It will provide vital information about the course, some of which will only be available on this page (e.g., lecture summaries and student contributions). It is therefore very important for those of you who are new to the Web to familiarize yourself with it as quickly as possible. In this lab, we will learn about some basic tools that you will need during this course on a regular basis. The Mac Lab will be open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:50 am to 3:00 pm.

You may find it useful to have a hardcopy of the document you are reading at the moment. So let's learn how to print things out: Click on "File" and hold the mouse button. Then move the mouse down to Print and release it. Then click on Print. There is also a short-cut to do this: Press the "Apple" key, hold it, then press "p".

Your TA is there to help you with any problem you may run into while you surf the Web or work on course material. So let's next learn about the quickest way to contact him (be sure to finish reading this paragraph before you leave this page). Clicking on the "Back" button will get you back to the ASTR 201 homepage (many of the pages that can be accessed from the ASTR 201 homepage, like this one, will have a link back to the homepage on the bottom of the document). Near the top of the homepage, you will find your TA's office number, phone number and e-mail address. He's very bad with remembering names, so click on the e-mail address and send him message in which you tell him something about you that will help him remember your name. Since the computers in the Mac Lab are used by different students, they will not add your name to your messages automatically, so be sure to include it as Subject: in every message you send from the Mac lab. To get back to "Introduction to the Worldwide Web" page, click on the forward button or click on the "Introduction to the Worldwide Web" link under "Homeworks, Labs, and Exams".

One of the most useful tools for finding things on the Web are search engines. One of these, the Alta Vista Search Engine, is included on the Astronomy Mac Lab Homepage. It is really simple to use: click on the the "Back" button several times to go to the Astronomy Mac Lab Homepage. Now imagine you heard on the news the other day that there is going to be a spacecraft with an Italian-sounding name flying to Saturn in the near future and you would like to know when it will be launched and when you can expect to see pictures it will send back. To find out, click on the gray entry field, then type "+Saturn +Spacecraft" (without the double quotes) and click on the "Submit" button. This will bring up a list of WWW pages that have the words Saturn and Spacecraft on them. Now pick the page that says "Cassini: Voyage to Saturn" and go to the Summary page. There you can learn about when Cassini will be launched, which organizations participate in the project, when Cassini is going to transmit pictures from Saturn, which of Saturns moons is going to be explored by a probe attached to Cassini, etc. When you are done reading about Cassini press the "Back" button several times to get back to the Alto Vista page that contains the search results. Click on the "Help" field on the top right and read about how to compose simple searches with Alta Vista.

Now try to come up with an astronomical question of your own and try to answer it using Alta Vista. Be fair and write down the question before you start looking for the answer. When you are done, send your TA an e-mail with the question and a one paragraph answer. Also include the "Uniform Resorce Locator", or "URL", of the documents that helped you answer your question. You find the URL in the gray box on top of the document. For example, the URL of the page you are reading at the moment is http://www.astro.washington.edu/bbeck/201/hwlabexa/www-intro.html. Instead of getting to this page by clicking on links on other pages, you could have gotten to it directly by clicking on "Open" and entering the "URL". It is therefore a good idea to write down the URLs of pages that you would like to go back to in the future. Your question and answer are going to be posted on the "Student Contributions" page that you can access via our course homepage.

Astronomy 201 Homepage
Astronomy Mac Lab Homepage

bbeck@astro.washington.edu