Astronomy: Exploring the Universe















The Big Picture

The Celestial Sphere

  • Sky Maps
  • The Magnitude Scale
  • The Nearest Star: Proxima Centauri
  • Eclipses During 2014
  • Orientation of a Crescent Moon
  • What's Your Sign?
  • Celestial Mechanics
  • Kepler's Laws


  • Light
  • The Magnitude Scale
  • Diffraction
  • Airy's disc
  • Wave-Particle Duality and Quantization

  • Telescopes
  • Spherical Aberration
  • The World's Largest Optical Telescopes
  • Hubble Space Telescope
  • Resolution of Telescopes
  • Diffraction Gratings
  • Radio Telescope
  • Ground versus Space Comparison: 1  2

  • The Interaction of Light and Matter
  • The Bohr Model
  • The Quantization of Energy
  • Atomic Orbitals
  • Video of Electron Diffraction
  • Blackbody Radiation
  • Temperatures
  • Solar Spectrum
  • Strength of Spectral Lines Versus T
  • Stellar Spectra

  • Stars
  • Stellar Parallax
  • Eclipsing Binaries
  • HR Diagrams
  • Disks around new stars and planet formation
  • Planetary Nebulae


  • Galaxies
  • Origin of Spiral Arms
  • Fun at Galaxy Zoo (help astronomers classify galaxies)
  • Cosmology: Science of the Universe
  • Cosmology 101
  • 2 MICRON ALL SKY SURVEY (2MASS)
  • Sloan Digital Sky Survey



  • Solar System:
    Europa* Mars* What's New



    Extrasolar Planets
  • Extrasolar Planet Searches
  • First Planet Found in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star
  • First Earth-Size Planet Found in Habitable Zone of Another Star
  • Hubble Gallery