These are sites I use as references and resources in the programs I teach.

StarChild   A site for younger students from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Windows to the Universe: Stars   From the National Earth Science Teachers Association.  An education site with many other topics.

Star Light Star Bright Activities   Activities on the nature of light and the study of stars.  From the Space Telescope Science Institute

 Land of the Magic Windows    Activities showing the range of electromagnetic radiation from Infrared to gamma.  Part of Spaceplace.

Spaceplace    A NASA site with space activities

Imagine the Universe – Stars  From the Goddard Space Flight Center.  There are other topics at this site.

StarDate  This site started with (and still has) short daily radio programs suitable for all ages. It has expanded to include many educational features.

Astronomy Magazine

Sky and Telescope

Space Weather Bureau   information about sunspots, solar flares, northern lights, meteors, and comets.

The Constellations

NASA Welcome to the Planets

The Nine Planets   A great reference.  They do acknowledge the new definition of Pluto but a website name is hard to change!

Hubble Heritage Project

NASA Earth Observatory

Astronomy Picture of the Day Index

HEASARC Picture of the Week Index    X-ray and gamma-ray observations

Lynette Cook Extrasolar Planet Art   good space art is a great way to learn about new findings

Bill Hartmann’s Painting Gallery    He is also a leading planetary scientist

Build a Solar System   An online calculator to compute the sizes needed for accurate scale models of the solar system.. From The Exploratorium in San Francisco

Particle Adventure   Modern astronomy has to take into account the nature of matter at its smallest scales.  This site is a good introduction.

Seti Institute   Leading organization in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

NASA Mars Exploration Homepage

Explore Mars Now   excellent  3-D interactive representation of a Mars base. Unfortunately it is based on Flash which is being phased out. Keep an eye on this, hopefully they will convert to other media.

The Mars Society   home of the Mars Direct Proposal of Robert Zubrin.

Warp Drive?   Site by the Tau Zero Foundation exploring the possibilities for interstellar travel

 Cosmic Distance Scale   A “powers of 10” tour of the universe from the High Energy Astrophysics Archive research Center

Voyager Mission Site     Official site of the Voyager Spacecraft. Features a real-time display of their current distances.

National Taiwan Normal U: JAVA applet showing moving source and sonic boom picture   Interactive simulation showing the effect of motion on waves and links to pictures and video about sonic booms.  Useful to illustrate the doppler effect. You might have trouble viewing this depending on your JAVA settings.

NASA – Stellar Evolution   An education site with various grade levels.

WMAP Life and Death of Stars: Universe 101   More on stars from the site of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.  The main focus of this site (and the probe) is cosmology

 Virtual Trips to Black Holes and Neutron Stars   One of many gems at the Astronomy Picture of the Day site

Detection of Exoplanets by Doppler shift from exoplanets.org   a “picture worth a thousand words.” This demo was broken at last visit and may be another casualty of the phase-out of Flash.

Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia   this site by a hobbyist is now the world’s leading reference site for planets beyond our solar system

Kepler Orrery II A visualization of planet systems discovered by the Kepler mission. There are other exoplanet resources at this site.

A Kepler Orrery Another visualization with our solar system shown for scale.

Stellarium A free planetarium program for all computers. There is a free web version and a paid Android/iPhone app.

Celestia A free, open source simulator for trips throughout the nearby galaxy.