Helpful Links
Primary Site for Stellar Data:
http://simbad.cfa.harvard.edu/simbad/
The Harvard-SAO "mirror" site
http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/
The primary site, at the CDS, Strasbourg, France
Useful Sites on Positional Astronomy:
http://star-www.st-and.ac.uk/~fv/webnotes/index.html
This site, created by Fiona Vincent of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, U.K., provides a very nice and diagram-rich tutorial on the celestial sphere, astronomical coordinate systems, etc.
Sites with information on current sky phenomena:
outreach.as.utexas.edu/public/skywatch.html
(from UT Astronomy; also gives current star party information)
stardate.org/nightsky
(StarDate is published by McDonald Observatory's Public Information Office)
www.skyandtelescope.com/
(at the website of one of the two main popular astronomy magazines; click on “This Week’s Sky at a Glance” for news and current sky views)
www.astronomy.com/News-Observing
(click on “The Sky This Week” at the lower left)
Sky simulator software:
www.stellarium.org/
- popular, and free
www.southernstars.com/products/skysafari/
- low-price versions available as apps for your smartphones
Websites for Professional Astronomical Data:
http://simbad.cfa.harvard.edu/simbad/
- SIMBAD is the premier stellar database
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/
- NED is the counterpart of SIMBAD, but for galaxies; it has some Tools that may be useful for many purposes
http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/
- A database mainly of infrared and submillimeter missions, hosted by IPAC (Caltech/JPL)
http://archive.stsci.edu/
- MAST, formerly the "Multi-mission Archive," now the (Sen. Barbara) Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, hosted at STScI (Space Telescope Science Institute), strong on UV, optical, and some near-IR data
http://exoplanets.org/
- Maintained by Jason Wright at Penn State and others; Jason Wright will give the Astronomy Colloquium at the UT Astronomy Department on Tues., Oct. 1, 2013.