Cool Space Programs / Sites

[Alex.]

Hello GTP. I was wondering if anyone had any decent sites or pieces of software etc. to share about space.

I've come across some cool space and astronomy sites lately that people might be interested in, so I'll post some links.

http://www.stellarium.org/ - A fantastic piece of software that lets you examine the night sky and identify stars, nebulas etc.

http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/ - Information on anti-matter

http://www.spacesounds.com/home/index.html - I'm not sure how this works, perhaps radio waves or similar, very interesting sounds from the universe

http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/ - Pretty self explanatory


Sorry if this sounds like a giant advert.

Anyone else got software / sites about space and the universe to reccomend?

 

[Pupik]

Good old APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) has been my start page for over 10 years now:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

 

[homeforsummer]

Stellarium is a favourite of mine. It's an amazing piece of software. I used it a while back to identify the stars and constellations in a photo I'd taken two years ago by looking at the photo's data and then setting the time in Stellarium to that exact date and time.

As for ones to recommend, how about Galaxy Zoo?

It's a mass-participation site using people to classify different galaxies according to their characteristics to aid astronomers in identifying particularly interesting galaxies to study. Once you've signed up you can start classifying, and although the majority of the galaxies are essentially white fuzzy blobs, very occasionally you do get given a picture of a stunning spiral galaxy or a merger to classify. Here's a typical pic from one of the forum threads:

There are over 150,000 people who've signed up to it so far.

 

[Nicknamealguem]

One program very cool for astronomers and space enthusiast is Celestia. It lets you navigate through real time 3D outer space. You can visit planets, asteroids and comets in our solar system, some known stars in our galaxy, other galaxies, etc.

 

[Danoff]

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/