Astronomy Teaching Resources

ASTRONOMY TEACHING & EDUCATION RESOURCES

(last update: 5/28/2020)

Astronomical News & Discoveries

Astronomy, Particle Physics, Quantum Physics Discoveries

Young Astronomers Newsletter by Art Gormeley now is in pdf with active links

news from Sky and Telescope

news from Earth & Sky

news from Astronomy Magazine

news from Scientific American

news from the American Astronomical Society

astrobites a summary of interesting publications from astrophysics graduate students brought down to undergrad level

Commentary on Astrophysics, Particle Physics, & Quantum Physics

Starts with a Bang by Ethan Siegel commentaries on and explanations of mostly asstrophysics

Backreaction by Sabine Hossenfelder commentary on mostly particle physics

Quantum Frontiers commentaries on quantum information & matter

Preposterous Universe by Sean Carroll commentaries on mostly cosmology

Of Particular Interest by Matt Strassler commentaries on and explanations of mostly particle physics (updates are sparse recently)

Science 2.0                                                             commentary (often right-wing) on all fields of science,,,,
                                                                                                            beware! these guys are suspicious of climate change

Educational Software

Image Processing

Astronomy image processing software
Astronomical image processing activities and curricula

Remote telescope observing
Citizen science projects
technical guide to FITS images

EU-HOU

Faulkes Telescope

Hands-On Universe

Chandra Ed image processing software useful for Chandra X-ray telescope images

Citizen Science projects

More than 20 current astronomy-oriented citizen-science projects exist
that allow you to access research-quality data and help professional astronomers classify objects and/or make discoveries

Interactive sky simulation software

Stellarium free open source software; > 600,000 stars; Windows, Linux, and Mac versions

and now a webversion

C2A Computer Aided Astronomy free; Windows only

Skychart (Cartes de Ciel) free software for drawing sky charts; Windows, Linux, and Mac versions

World Wide Telescope

HomePlanet free; > 250,000 stars; excels at locating artificial satellites, comets, and asteroids; less realistic sky view than those above

Starry Night $49.95 and up

The Sky $49.95 and up

Red Shift $59.99

and for phones and tablets

Java and other simulation software

CLEA -- Laboratory Exercises in Astronomy: 12 download-able simulations usable in college or advanced high school (including Hubble redshift law; H-R diagram of the Pleiades; Mercury's rotation; photon random walk in the sun; determining Jupiter's mass using its moons; spectral classification; large scale structure of the universe)

Nebraska Astronomy Applet Project 15 Applets targeting the undergraduate introductory astronomy audience (including blackbody curves, binary simulator, exoplanets and habitable zones, variable star photometry)

Project LITE Spectrum Explorer interactively explore blackbody radiation

Simulations of spectroscopic and eclipsing binaries

Spectroscopic binary applet

Eclipsing binary applet

Eclipsing binary simulator

downloadable eclipsing binary simulator

GalCrash model galaxy collsions

Galaxsee create your own galaxy

Astronomy Texts of the Future

Astronomy HyperText Book
Virtual Astronomy Library

Other Educational Resources

Newsletters, Journals, and Preprints

popular

Sky and Telescope including What's up in the sky; their catalog of books, software, observing aids; telescope reviews and more
Astronomy magazine
Astronomy Now the leading astro magazine from Great Britain
Mercury magazine & Universe in the Classroom from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific