Astro Raven

University of Washington
 Astronomy Department

Introductory Astronomy Clearinghouse
LINKS


These sights have been culled from search engines. This is a time consuming process, and so the site is continuously under development. If you know of a link that you'd like to see here, or one that has fallen out of date, please e-mail me at larson@astro.washington.edu

Curriculum:

  1. Cool Java simulations of orbits, etc. Thanks Amy and George of Amherst College! Come back to the labs portion of this website soon to see some labs rewritten to use these great tools.
  2. Andrew Fraknoi has compiled a list of Resources for Instructors of Introductory Astronomy Courses, which contains further nested lists of resources of various kinds. Extremely useful site, this.
  3. Swinburn University has put together a few exercises that help students with the basic physics required to understand astronomy. Currently there are three exercises: 'Optical Telescopes', 'Nebulae', and 'Binary Stars'. They require PowerPoint 97 (or 98), and recommend Explorer for your browser.
  4. NASA Education Home Page
    Lots of access to catalogs of things that you can buy or order from NASA for your classroom...
  5. QUEST
    NASA's K-12 internet initiative. Possibly the most important thing on this site is a list of ways to get $$$$$$$ for education-related projects.
  6. From Stargazers to Starships
    A tutorial exposition all about the Earth-Moon-Sun system. It is designed at the high school level, and contains a math review... This is essentially an on-line textbook, with some nice gifs. The pages are directed towards an exploration of space flight, not strictly astronomy, but there is a lot of good material here, especially if you are looking for inspiring stuff for students.
  7. NASA Spacelink
    Spacelink offers links to NASA programs, teacher guides, activities, images, etc.
  8. The Exploration of the Earth's Magnetosphere
    Again, mostly space science, but lots of information for inspiration!

Lecture Notes:

  1. Nick Strobel's HTML Lecture Notes
    These lecture notes are pretty complete, and can be a good resource for students and profs alike...

Collaborative Learning:


The latest in education theory says that in-class activities are way better than straight lectures. You knew that already, but it's hard to come up with appropriate activities, and you hated it when you were a kid. But your students aren't much like you, and there's help available! Give it a try. You might like it better now that you get to lead the activity...
  1. The College Level One Team (part of the National Institute for Science Education), is based at teh University of Wisconsin-Madison. They study this collaborative learning stuff full-time.

Assessment:


Let's face it---if you want to know how much your students actually understand of what you taught them, you need to carry out a little more detailed assessment than the average multiple choice test. Lots of people (notably the folks at Montana State University) spend a lot of time pondering the best way to pick your students' brains.
  1. Michael Zeilik has written a how-to for standard diagnostics.
  2. The Astronomy Diagnostic Test is such a standard diagnostic.
  3. The College Level One Team (part of the National Institute for Science Education), is based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They also study this assessment stuff full-time.

Pretty Pictures:

  1. Discovery Channel's coverage of the Sun. They've gathered a few "live" solar cams together for this site. Fun to look at simultaneous Doppler and UV images.
  2. Astronomy Picture of the Day
  3. Bill Keel's GIF Farm
  4. The Messier Catalog

Magazines:

  1. Astronomy American publication about astronomy.
  2. Astronomy Now! British astronomy magazine with news, reports, and archives.
  3. Sky and Telescope American publication about astronomy.
  4. The Universe Today A web-based astronomy/space science newsletter.

Telescopes:

  1. Hubble Space Telescope
  2. Arecibo Radio Telescope
  3. NOAO National Optical Astronomy Observatory
  4. NRAO National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Asteroids:

  1. Spaceguard Survey

Extra-terrestrials:

  1. This site (Contact, the movie!) is just for fun,
  2. but this one (SETI itself!) is where all the action is.
  3. SETI@HOME will let you look for extra-terrestrial signals yourself (no kidding!)

Spacecraft:

  1. Our very own Don Brownlee is primary investigator on STARDUST!
  2. NASA TV Space shuttle launches, etc. This site has the program listings...

Other:

  1. How about some Bad Astronomy? This site has lots of fun heckling of movies, the news, etc. -- setting the stories straight.
  2. Astronomy On-Line
  3. Check out SOFIA for opportunities to get involved in real astronomy research even if you are an educator from a non-research based University or College.

Associations, Agencies and Organizations:

  1. AAS American Astronomical Society
  2. ASP Astronomical Society of the Pacific
  3. AURA Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy
  4. EAAE European Association For Astronomy Education
  5. NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  6. WNSGC Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium

Departments:

This is eventually going to be a pretty comprehensive list of departments. The type of department is indicated next to the link (Astronomy, Physics & Astronomy or Space Science and Astronomy). The asterisks indicate whether anything useful of an educational nature may be found there, and in no way indicate anything about the department or the quality of the web page. It is a content rating only! A five star site is one you don't want to miss.
  1. Arizona State(P&A)
  2. Rice U. (SS&A)
  3. U. Edinburgh (P&A)
  4. U. Hawaii (A)
  5. U. Iowa (P&A)
  6. U. Maryland (A) **
  7. U. Missouri, St Louis (P&A)
  8. U. New Mexico (P&A)
  9. U. Penn. (P&A)
  10. U. Texas (A)
  11. U. Washington (A) ****** (We're biased in favor of ourselves!)

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