SCALES OF SPACE:

WorldWizz.com has a very good webpage on using scales from tiny quarks to the edges of the universe. Great resource if you're not sure you understand powers of ten.





PLANET EARTH:

Earth's Seasons: Very cool animations showing how a change in the Earth's tilt would change the seasons and the length of daylight.


Earth-Moon Viewer: Another good graphic site! This one lets you see both the Earth and Moon from many different perspectives and time frames.


Polaris and the Sun: This simple website shows the positions of the Sun and Polaris from all latitudes. A good place to refresh your memory about the seasonal changes in the sky.

More Animations: Nice animations that show the motions of the earth, moon, and planets (including retrograde motion).

THE MOON:

Inconsistent Moon: A good source on any topic relating to the Earth's only natural satellite. Good discussion of the moon's phases. Photography is excellent, too. Make sure you visit the Cyclopedia page.

NASA Eclipse: This is one of many useful sites produced by NASA. You can find out the times and locations for eclipses for the rest of your lifetime here. When will we see a total solar eclipse in Rochester?


EARTH-MOON DATA:
The US Naval Observatory is the best place to get data such as sunrise/sunset, moon phases, altitude of sun in the sky. You can get data easiest from the United States and our territories, but other locations are possible if you know their latitude/longitude coordinates.



SOLAR SYSTEM ANIMATIONS:


This website from Ohio State University has some great animations about motion in the Solar System. Check out the phases of the Earth as seen from the Moon. The retrograde motion of Mars is good too!

And More Animations from the Hayden Planetarium....

This is a great place to see revolving planets, storm clouds on Jupiter, and much more! It also links to animations from stars, galaxies, and beyond! Visit the Hayden Planetarium Astrophysics Visualization Archive.


Planets appear to go "backwards," which is a tricky concept to explain. In the Copernican heliocentric model of the Solar System, the backward apparent motion is caused by the Earth passing a slower planet (or Venus or Mercury passing us). This little animation for the University of Illinois shows retrograde motion well.

NEAR EARTH OBJECTS:
This website from NASA has a wealth of information about asteroids and comets that cross the Earth's orbit. Of special interest is the Orbit Diagrams link. You can choose from a long list of near earth objects, and follow their orbits as well as the inner planets.




This is another good website from NASA about Solar Physics. It gives you statistics about the Sun and a link to a couple dozen other pages about different aspects about the only star in our neck of the galaxy. (They are found in the blue border on the left).


Sunspots: This website for the Solar Influence Data analysis Center (SIDC) in Belgium has all kinds of data about solar storms and sunspots. They usually have up-to-date images of the sun showing solar activity.

The Evolution of Our Sun: a nice simple Flash animation showing how the sun was born and how it will eventually die, all on the background of an H-R Diagram.

BINARY STARS: Over half the known stars are in binary pairs, and many are in multiple systems. Binaries are important because they tell us the mass of stars. You need gravitation pull to use Newton's Laws to determine stellar mass. Here are some good sites to see the three kinds of binary systems in motion:
VISUAL: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/binaries/visual.html
ECLIPSING: http://www.astro.ubc.ca/~scharein/a311/Sim.html
This is also a good source for other good animations (hydrogen fusion, evolution of stars, etc.)
SPECTROSCOPIC: http://www-astronomy.mps.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/TeachRes/Movies162/#spbin