Online Astronomy Text Table of Contents (by Courtney Seligman) Astropedia Textbook - Teach Astronomy. Gravity Simulator. Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial. News of the UniverseFrequently Asked QuestionsEnter the tutorial or the Italian version or the French version Cosmological fads and fallacies CMB SpectrumCMB AnisotropyBig Bang NucleosynthesisSupernova ObservationsCosmology, Religion & KansasSend me your comments New on the tutorial: A discussion of the history of the CMB dipole discovery.
A history of COBE, the COsmic Background Explorer, in pictures. Cosmology is the study of the origin, current state, and future of our Universe. Astronomy and cosmology are very much mathematical sciences, but I have attempted to avoid higher math in these pages. In addition to the cosmology tutorial, there is also a relativity tutorial and extensive discussions on the age, density and size of the Universe.
Slides for recent talks: The course notes (131 pages, 403 equations, 51 figures) for the upper division undergraduate Stellar Systems and Cosmology course, Astronomy 140, that I last taught in spring 2008 are available on the Web. SolarBeat. General Astronomy. Astronomy is the scientific study of the universe as a whole, and of celestial bodies and the underlying physics governing these bodies.
It is in some sense one of the oldest of the natural sciences, having been practiced by even very ancient civilizations, but it is also among the most modernized of the sciences, having extensively exploited both advances in technology and the rise of space exploration. The progress of technology has dramatically improved our understanding of the universe, revealing a richer tapestry than had ever been imagined before. This Wikibook introduces the advanced secondary or beginning university student to that tapestry and the process that revealed it to humanity, presenting astronomy not only as a field of knowledge, but also as a human endeavor in science. Table of Contents[edit] References Exercises Also on Wikimedia[edit] Wikibooks is a Web site where this and other free textbooks are developed. Galaxy Zoo: Hubble. Curious About Astronomy? Ask an Astronomer.
Powers of Ten™ Journey to the end of the universe. Powers of Ten - Ultimate Zoom. The Scale of the Universe 2. If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel - A tediously accurate map of the solar system. Mercury Venus Earth You Are Here Moon Mars Jupiter Io Europa Ganymede Callisto Saturn Titan Uranus Neptune Pluto(we still love you) That was about 10 million km (6,213,710 mi) just now. Pretty empty out here. Here comes our first planet... As it turns out, things are pretty far apart. We’ll be coming up on a new planet soon. Most of space is just space. Halfway home. Destination: Mars! It would take about seven months to travel this distance in a spaceship. Sit back and relax. When are we gonna be there? Seriously. This is where we might at least see some asteroids to wake us up. I spy, with my little eye... something black. If you were on a road trip, driving at 75mi/hr, it would have taken you over 500 years to get here from earth.
All these distances are just averages, mind you. If you plan it right, you can actually move relatively quickly between planets. Pretty close to Jupiter now. Sorry. Lots of time to think out here... Pop the champagne! We're always trying to come up with metaphors for big numbers. Interactive 3D model of Solar System Planets and Night Sky. Galaxies. WorldWide Telescope. Universe Sandbox.