Finding Fascinating Things

Yesterday I talked here about space agencies as sources of cool information about astronomy and space science. Today, I’m going to walk you through a collection of just some of my favorite astronomy observatories. First off is one of my favorites — the Gemini Observatory, which operates out of two sites in Hawai’i and Chile.  I’ve beenworking with them for several years now as an associate editor of GeminiFocus, their twice-yearly publication.

Next is the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the fabulous Hubblesite.org web page.  It’s home to more Hubble Space Telescope material than you can possibly imagine, and good for hours of surfing pleasure!  It’s one of my first stops every day or so, just so I can find the latest and greatest from one of my favorite telescopes.

The Hubble Europe folks also have an amazing array of information on their pages, so I usually check them out every couple of days, too.

After that, I usually check out the Chandra X-ray Observatory Web pages for the latest in x-ray exploration of the cosmos. Then, I head over to the Cassini Equinox Mission web pages for my Saturn system fix.  Following that, I check out the latest at Mars, which covers the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, as well as any of the orbiting missions to the Red Planet.

The European Southern Observatory usually has something new every few days and is well worth a few hours of browsing.

Next stop is often the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which gives you a nice radio-wave view of the cosmos.  Beyond that (and moving across the electromagnetic spectrum), I try to pick up the latest and greatest from the Spitzer Space Telescope, our orbiting infrared eye in the sky.

Now, mind you, I can’t do that much surfing every day — and, indeed, there are many, many MORE sites out there, like the MESSENGER mission to Mercury, and the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and the fabulous Kepler mission to look for Earth-like planets (which just launched this year) and on and on… but, these are a good start on the multitudes of astronomy and space science sites that are out there, just waiting for you to find them.

Chances are you could spend days browsing through just these pages, and learning a LOT about the solar system, our galaxy, galaxy clusters, interactions, and the large-scale structure of the universe just from these sites. And, if you follow the many, many links to other places from these sites, you’ll be surfing the cosmos for days… weeks… months.

It’s worth it, I say. So, check ’em out. And, in a future installment, I’ll bring you some more cosmic web sites by other observatories, scientists, and science writers — all ready for you to visit and enjoy!!