Cosmic Awareness: What's Up There?
If you ever become curious and want to know answers to the ever-intriguing question, "What's up there?" - well, in today's computer world, the answers are easy to find. There are many astronomy websites that are chock full of interesting information about what is going on in the universe beyond Planet Earth. Here are my faves:
Heavens Above Begin at the beginning, in the Configuration segment. You can either select a site to submit, register, or create a new user account that will save your settings for you. Then you can find information about when you will be able to see the International Space Station (ISS) fly over along with other satellites, see sky charts for your location and a chosen time, learn about the stars, planets, comets, and much more.
StarDate Online Super informative, set up in a way that encourages learning about the night skies.
Ciclops The official source of Cassini images of Saturn and its Rings & Moons. Check out the slideshow on the "Newsroom" page for a quick survey of the best images. Many of the images are pretty mindblowing (I have an incredible photo of the shadow of the moon Minas across the Rings of Sarurn as my desktop). Carolyn Porco, leader of the imaging team for the Cassini Saturn mission, was recently awarded the 2010 Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in the Communication of Science to the Public by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.
This stuff never fails to amaze me!
