User Guide
User’s Guide to the Night Sky: Resources
Astrolab Time Lapse Movies
Perception
Reality
Other movies
Star Charts, etc
- Current Sky Chart for Durham from Heavens-Above (New)
- Charts from Alan Pickup’s Starwatch series in The Guardian
- Star charts from www.skymaps.com (Note the charts are for 40 deg N!)
- Star charts etc from www.skyviewcafe.com
- Dr Jamie Love’s Getting your Bearings
- David Malin’s images of the Constellations, i.e. The Plough, Orion
- The Plough, Leo, Gemini, Cassiopeia, Perseus, Orion
- Finding other constellations from the Plough (Ursa Major, the Big Dipper)
- Proper Motion of the stars in Ursa Major
- Big Dipper proper motion
- Bright Stars: Achernar, Aldebaran, Algol, Alpha Cen, Altair, Arcturus, Betelgeuse, Canopus, Capella, Castor, Deneb, Pollux, Procyon, Regulus, Rigel, Sirius, Spica.
- Satellite Visibility for Durham including ISS and Iridium Flares
- Algol
- “The Dunhuang chinese sky: a comprehensive study of the oldest known star atlas” by Bonnet-Bidaud, J.M., Praderie, F. & Whitfield, S.
Online Notes, Animations and Figures
- Small-angle approximation
- Star counts: Why for the simple model N(m) ∝ 100.6m
- The celestial sphere
- Local Sidereal Time
- The Ecliptic: the Sun’s annual path on the celestial sphere
- The movement of the sky over one sidereal day as seen from Durham
- Solar and Sidereal Days
- Durham allsky movie (2018-Oct-09)
- SBIG’s fisheye lens all-sky movie
- Time Lapse Sky Shows Earth Rotating Instead of Stars
- The position of the midday sun as seen from Durham during the year
- The daily track of Sun across the sky at the time of the equinox (Durham)
- The daily track of Sun across the sky at the time of the summer solstice (Durham)
- The daily track of Sun across the sky at the time of the winter solstice (Durham)
- The daily track of Sun across the sky at the time of the summer solstice (Latitude = +75°)
- RA-Dec directions and motions as seen from Durham
- Vega and Deneb tracking pass Durham Cathedral
- Skywatcher’s Guide to the Moon
- Moon impact! NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter finds new craters
- Lunar Sidereal and Synodic Months
- Why the Moon crosses the meridian, on average, 50.5 minutes later each day
- Eclipses Online
- Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 August 21
- NASA Goodard Understanding Lunar Eclipses
- Antonio Cidadao’s Lunation Movie
- NASA Goddard’s Moon Phase 2019
- Anthony Ayiomamitis’ impressive images of the 2008-Aug-16 Lunar Eclipse
- Current positions of the Sun, Moon and planets
- How to estimate the opposition (RA, Dec) position of a planet
- Mercury Chaser’s Calculator
- Motions of the Inner Planets
- Motions of the Inner Planets relative to a fixed Sun-Earth line
- Mars 2003
- Mars 2005
- Mars 2007
- The Wandering Stars
- Mercury retrograde, explained …
- Apophis: the Friday 13th Destroyer. Predictions by Giorgini et al (2008)
- Horizontal Plane and Day/Night
- Animations from NAAP
- Equinoxes, Solstices, Perihelion, and Aphelion, 2000-2020
- The Equation of Time
- AuroraWatch UK, NOAA Auroral Forecast, Spaceweather.com, Current Space Weather, Auroral Activity Sighting Reports (map)
- Steve Barnes’ Aurora Movie
- Stephane Guisard’s All-sky Aurora above Great Slave Lake
- Durham Aurora 2014 Feb 27
- SOHO movie of Comet Neat V1 passing the Sun
- SOHO movie of the great storm of October 2003
- Peekskill meteor
- Chelyabinsk meteor (movie)
- Geminids in 2007
- Where are the Voyagers?
- All-sky map of the Milky Way (local copy) from www.atlasoftheuniverse.com
- Stephane Guisard’s flash animation of the “sky” from Paranal
- Summer Triangle
- Copernicus, in Conversation with God, (1872)
- Solar-System Evolution: The Nice Model
- MAVEN
- Erik Wernquist’s Wanderers
- Erik Wernquist’s New Horizons
- Five Ways Mariner 4 Changed Mars Exploration
- Navigating an asteroid field
- A Guide to Gale Crater
- NASA Has Been Exploring Mars Every Day For The Last 20 Years
- An ordinary day on Mars
- BBC Series: The Planets
- Cassini’s Grand Finale
- Cassini-Huygens Titan
- Saturn’s Rings May Be Ancient After All
- US Navy grabs old-fashioned sextants amid hacker attack fears
- Air Canada pilot mistakes Venus for a plane …
- The Kuiper Belt
- Mike Brown’s lecture on the Grand Tack
- Pluto and Beyond – Nova Documentary 2019
Software
- Stellarium is a planetarium programme that is available Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX and and Linux. It is free and open source. Apparently “It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.”
- Also recommended are the that apps are available for smart phones, e.g. Google Sky for Android and Star Walk for IPhone
Books
- The introduction chapters of any good general astronomy book, e.g.
Chapters 1-3, 6 of “In Quest of the Universe” by Kuhn & Koupelis, (Jones & Barlett, 3rd Ed.)
Chapters 2, S1 of “The Cosmic Perspective” by Bennett et al. (Pearson, 3rd Ed.) - “How to identify (the) Night Sky” by Storm Dunlop & Will Tirion (Collins)
- “Out of the Blue” by John Naylor (CUP)
- “Practical Astronomy” by Peter Duffett-Smith (CUP, 3rd Ed.)
- “The Ever-Changing sky: a Guide to the Celestial Sphere” by James B. Kaler (CUP)
- “Observing the Universe” by Andrew J Norton, see Part 1, The Night Sky
Wikipedia Links
Weather
Highly Recommended Links
- Bob O’Connell’s page Motions in the Sky & Coordinate Systems
- Sten Odenwald’s Ask the Astronomer
- NASA’s Eclipse Web Site
- The Messier Catalog
- The Nine Planets
- Monty Python’s Astronomy Lesson
- Martin J. Powell’s Naked Eye Planets
- Nick Strobel’s Astronomy Notes including Astronomy Without a Telescope.
- Current Solar Images
- LASCO/EIT real time movies of the Sun
- S & T Current Astronomical News
- Buying Stars and Star Names
- Inconstant Moon
- S & T – Sky at a Glance
- Hawaiian Astronomical Society’s Constellation List
- Chris Dolan’s The Constellations and their Stars
- Campaign for Dark Skies
- NASA/JPL’s solar system simulator – a spyglass on the cosmos
- The Stellar Magnitude System
- What Are Northern Lights?
- Astronomy Answers
- Les Cowley’s Atmospheric Optics
- Claus Tonderin’s FAQ about Calendars
- What is a Leap Second?
- The World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness (Ugh!)
- Where is M13? – A Three Dimensional Galactic Atlas
- AstroLab Home Page