Astronomy Sites for education, astronomy for kids

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All (known) Bodies in the Solar System Larger than 200 Miles in Diameter. 88 known objects in our Solar System that are larger than 200 miles in diameter on one large, extra wide graphic. Pretty interesting for the art alone, and the information is accurate at this time.

Ask an Astronomer From CalTech's Cool Cosmos site. Windows Media or QuickTime videos answering common kid questions.

Asteroid 2011 MD is about 10 metres long, and will barely miss Earth today (27 June 2011). Here's a great animation of its path! More information here.

Astro for Kids from Astronomy.com. Facts on the Solar System, navigating by the stars, and more. For upper elementary and above. Cool photos, too.

Astronomy for Kids Easy to use, straightforward site with simple astronomy facts for kids.

M31 Galaxy Astronomy Picture of the Day also called APOD. From NASA. Every day a new astronomy photo or painting, with a narrative under it. The photos are absolutely astounding, breathtaking, stunning, magnificent. ! The site also has a Glossary, Educational links/resources, more. Cruise the Archives for many more pix!

AstroTour Solar system interactive virtual orrery from Gunn Interactive of New Zealand. "A free, educational, customizable, scriptable model of the solar-system. Have fun! Learn Something!" We took their intro tour and watched the retrograde orbits demo. Pretty cool. A good way to investigate the Solar System. Reddited.

AstroViewer "Your night sky map in the internet" This excellent interactive constellations viewer lets you see the names in Latin or English.

Atlas of the Universe This site rocks! "This web page is designed to give everyone an idea of what our universe actually looks like. There are nine main maps on this web page, each one approximately ten times the scale of the previous one. The first map shows the nearest stars and then the other maps slowly expand out until we have reached the scale of the entire visible universe." The site does a very good job of it, too.

Catching the Light Astrophotography by Jerry Lodriguss. AWESOME photos will make you remember the wonder that first drew you to astronomy.

Celestia Fantastically cool download! "... The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. " Zoom between planets and constellations, watch Deimos and Phobos fly across the face of Mars, hundreds of other things to see! With data on every object you look at. Download it at the above link or here from SourceForge. Stupifyingly wonderful. (Celestia must be installed on computers, it cannot be played online.)

Celestia Motherlode is where you can download extensions, add-ons, etc for Celestia. If it's even possible to improve upon Celestia, this is where to do it. There are some really great things here! Watch the file size, some of these are fairly big for some school computers.

Chandra X-ray Observatory from Harvard University. "Discover the images of the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Dive into the wonder of everything from Black Holes to X-ray Binaries. Below you can find various ways to find just the image you are looking for. " Browse images by category or date, or..."Explore the X-ray sky with an interactive Sky Map, and learn about Galactic Navigation. Constellations: Background information on selected constellations and links to objects observed within them. 3D Wall: Scroll through the entire library of released Chandra images in a quick-downloading 3d wall format with the Cooliris plug-in. Special Features: Collections of Chandra images to browse through in html & flash formats." Many other goodies as well. This is suitable for elementary through college, easily. Going in Astronomy!

Constellation Links for Kids from Athropolis is a good list of astronomy sites.

Constellation Hunt from KidsAstronomy is like a word search of the sky!

Constellations from Chandra. "Background information on selected constellations and links to objects observed within them." We're giving this its own listing since constellations are a popular elementary school science item.

Constellations from Enchanted Learning/Zoom Astronomy! Their usual excellent coverage for elementary and middle school. Subscribe so they'll keep doing sites like these!

Constellations and their Stars Great resource site! Information about constellations, stars, much more, also has interactive sky charts.

Constellation Photos This site shows photos of the stars and the constellation outline. Lists both ancient Greek and "modern" constellations.

Cosmos4Kids! offers a lot of good basic information about astronomy in a highly organized site.

Dome of the Sky Lists constellations by northern and southern hemispheres and time of year. Has outline of each constellation and the story or myth behind it. Good resource.

Earth's Seasons from Enchanted Learning. Find out about the Equinox, the Solstice, and the seasons of the year at this fine offering.

Exploring Planets in the Classroom hands-on science activities This venerable Hawaiian site has hands-on activities and lesson plans! Now with volcano activities!

Eyes on the Solar System from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. ""Eyes on the Solar System" is a 3-D environment full of real NASA mission data. Explore the cosmos from your computer. Hop on an asteroid. Fly with NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft. See the entire solar system moving in real time. It's up to you. You control space and time." This is great! Think of a 3-D Celestia program, very hands-on and easy to use! Loved zooming around and rotating planets& moons. Needs the Unity Web Player to be installed.

Gravity Wells This large, well done PNG image explains the idea of gravity wells in easy to understand cartoon form. It's from xkcd, a well know ubergeek site with cartoons of interest to, well, MIT/Caltech undergrads, shall we say. This one is appropriate for kids old enough to grasp the concepts it explains, but we cannot recommend you let your kids go to xkcd.

Hakan's Space Balls is an arty site, all on one page; that compares the sizes of Earth, Venus, and the other planets; then compares them all to the sun; then compares the sun's size to other, larger and larger stars. Really explains the comparative sizes of heavenly bodies without using words.

Interactive 3D model of Solar System Planets and Night Sky Astronomy for Everybody / Discover Solar System with User-friendly application / Real-time positions and Movements of the Planets and the Moon / Night sky with Constellations / Space-art graphics / No download required Nice! Also has cool music.

Interactive 360 degree map of the heavens A giant 360 degree sky photo. Zoom in and out, scroll up, scroll down, scroll all the way around! Shows constellations and stellar objects! Just amazing fun and a great learning tool!

Khan Academy "is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere...We are complementing Salman (Khan's) ever-growing library with user-paced exercises--developed as an open source project--allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World." 1800+ videos cover math from 1 + 1 up through differential equations; Science: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Organic Chem, Cosmology, Astronomy; History; Finance (BIG section!); Test Prep: SAT, GMAT, CAHSEE, IIT JEE. The videos are wonderful! This is amazing and FREE! (Oh all right ... Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!)

Kids Astronomy section of KidsKnowIt. Good information at a well organized, if busy, site.

Jupiter in motion. This is a repeating animated gif video of Jupiter, taken from one of the Voyager spacecraft. Fantastic little gif file. You can see the Red Spot and watch different bands moving at different speeds; fastest at the equator, slower at higher latitudes. Just watch it!

Mars for Kids has games and activities (online and printouts) for kids. The games are fun and educational. Note: Your Weight on Mars doesn't work (but that's OK, we already link to Your Weight On Other Worlds anyway) and "A Little ROCK on Mars" has a broken link.

Moonbase Alpha "A 3-D Immersive NASA Exploration Game. Step into the role of an explorer in a futuristic lunar settlement...Moonbase Alpha is the first of two commercial-quality NASA games developed in partnership with commercial game developers." Looks great!

My Solar System 2.03 The PhET simulations crew at CU Boulder does it again! Trace orbits, play with gravity, watch planetary interactions, moons, comets, more! Play and learn! Great tool for teaching gravity

NASA Images This is the new NASA image archive site, which catalogues 100,000 stunning images! All the space photos NASA has posted are here. We looked at at a few hundred and were amazed. A fantastic reference source, or just look at the thousands of photos!

NASA Mars Rover Missions This is the main site for Opportunity and Spirit. You can get to all the Mars Rover photos from here. Also has links Mars for Kids and Mars for Educators.

NASA Space Place "Welcome to the Space Place! Come on in and check out our games, animations, projects, and fun facts about Earth, space and technology."

Phoenix Mars Mission Wow! We have a new lander on the North Pole of Mars! This is the education section of the official site. There's Mars 101, five sections of info about Mars. Just for Kids has the fun stuff and activities (and Steve the Cat.) Phoenix Classroom has lesson plans, activities, and resources. The Web Exhibit is worth watching, although the Flash video was rather small and hard to read. Pictures from Mars are accessible from the Phoenix home page.

Planets of the Solar System "What my site offers students that other solar system sites don't is a top-notch 3D interactive solar system model. (This is a great tool for students to visualize the solar system, and it's just plain fun to play around with.) Of course, my site also offers images, facts, data, and up-to-date solar system news. What you won't find on my site is a bunch of ads that detract from the educational material." This was way cool, good info, nice music, great graphical interface, just fun to play with!

Flag of Ireland Planets for Kids is an astronomy site by a nine year old kid for kids! Lots of good and easy to understand information. Facts that may be hard for a student to get elsewhere are in here. The site is quite colorful and well laid out, so it is easy to find what you need to do a report for school! Kudos to young Stephen and his dad, of Dublin, Ireland, for creating this site!

Sky This is the "sky" portion of Sea and Sky's site. A very good resource, the site has good information on the Messier Catalog, constellations, photo galleries, tours of the solar system, an illustrated glossary, and games. We can't recommend the "Sky News" section for kids' viewing, but the rest of the site is excellent. Someone did a lot of work to gather and organize all this information

Space Science from Extreme Science. The space section of the larger site.

StarChild Nice site for beginning astronomers from NASA. Good information and cute, too.

StarDate Yep, it's the same people who have the show on National Public Radio! Stargazing, Resources, Teachers, more. Link opens into the Resources section, with links and a big glossary!

Stellar Evolution is a fine repeating Flash video of the life and death of a star. Good for about 8th grade and up. Discusses stellar decay, elements. From Valdosta State University, Valdosta, Georgia, USA.

Stellarium "is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go." We love the constellation settings that let you show the mythological chracters around the bowl of the sky! This is in the same genre as Celestia.

The ~~Nine~~ 8 Planets (Newer URL) A good informational site that adults and kids have used for years. Scroll down to Contents to see what they have.

The ~~Nine~~ 8 Planets Just for Kids The elementary level version.

UDF SkyWalker - the Hubble telescope Deep Field interactive site! Use the small field at the top left to scroll around in the larger field. Cool!

The Universe within 1 billion Light Years - The Neighbouring Superclusters. "Galaxies and clusters of galaxies are not uniformly distributed in the Universe, instead they collect into vast clusters and sheets and walls of galaxies interspersed with large voids in which very few galaxies seem to exist. The map above shows many of these superclusters including the Virgo supercluster - the minor supercluster of which our galaxy is just a minor member. The entire map is approximately 7 percent of the diameter of the entire visible Universe." There are also maps of other superclusters. (New URL!)

Visible Earth NASA has listed their favorite photos of earth from space. Many cool photos, worth checking them out.

We Choose The Moon is an interactive experience recreating the historic Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in real time. Once where only three men made the trip, now millions can. Live event begins 8:02 AM EDT July 16, 2009, with launch at 9:32 a.m., exactly 40 years after Apollo 11 lifted off. Going in Astronomy, Social Studies, and Technology.

Welcome to the Planets This NASA site has plenty of photos and facts about the planets. Colorful and nicely laid out.

Your Age on Other Worlds Your age in years is different on different planets!

Your Weight On Other Worlds Kids are amazed at what they would weigh (or not weigh) on different planets!

Zoom Astronomy "is a comprehensive on-line site about space and astronomy. It is designed for people of all ages and levels of comprehension. It has an easy-to-use structure that allows readers to start at a basic level on each topic and then to progress to much more advanced information as desired, simply by clicking on links." Extremely good site, typical of Zoom.

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