last updated 5/10/07

ASTRONOMY 330 LINKS PAGE

HISTORY

New interactive history of cosmology website from the American Institute of Physics

Click below for some wonderful biographies; here is the main index of the website.

Ptolemy Hipparchus Copernicus Kepler Brahe* Galileo Newton Halley

*A more "colorful" Tycho Brahe page, including his nose, his pet moose and his death

The Shapley-Curtis Debate

Heliacal Rising of Sirius

Copernicus's Seven Axioms

SCALE AND MOTION

Powers of Ten applet

Here's an actual SCALE MODEL of the solar system being constructed along Route 1 in Maine. The scale is 1 mile=1 AU. (1 AU = the distance from the Earth to the Sun = 93 million miles = 150 million km.) At this scale, the nearest star would be beyond the real orbit of the moon!

Explanation of distances in astronomy, and parallax

A Parallax applet

Schematic of what retrograde motion looks like. Double-click the image to start.

What it really looks like, shown here when Jupiter and Saturn happened to be located in the same part of the sky.

Retrograde Motion - Ptolemy's explanation

Retrograde Motion - Copernicus' explanation

Kepler's Laws: I, II, III visualization; III; III applet

An Interactive applet for Kepler's Laws, Retrograde Motion, Inner Planet Phases, and more...

Newton's Mountain

The Bay of Fundy Tides

Tide Animation

PHYSICAL PRINCIPLES

Galileo was right!

Transverse and Longitudinal Waves

Doppler Effect sounds

The Rutherford Experiment:
if positive charge were evenly spread throughout an atom
if the positive charge were concentrated in a tiny nucleus

PARTICLES

Periodic Table

The sheet on particles and forces

blowup of the chart of particles and interactions in the stairwell.

Particle Adventure

Schombert's dark matter page

Explanation of the Higgs Boson

STARS

Hydrostatic Equilibrium demonstration

First step in hydrogen fusion
Second step in hydrogen fusion
Last step in hydrogen fusion

Watch fusion simulation click on the top image. You might as well grab a cup of coffee - this takes a while to get to the end...

Helium fusion

Stellar Evolution and the HR Diagram

Structure of the Milky Way Galaxy

The Pleiades: an open cluster

M3: a globular cluster

Nuclear Production in Stars

A Gallery of Planetary Nebula Spectra

Sun/White Dwarf size comparison

WD binary can produce a nova

Accretion Disks

Nova - before and after

Electron Degeneracy

Chandrasekhar Limit

Building neutron-rich isotopes

High-mass core -- Type II SN precursor

Why an iron core means good-bye

Type II Supernova explosion cartoon

White Dwarf/Neutron Star size comparison

abundances of the elements

WD in a binary -- Type Ia SN precursor

SN Light curves

SN Ia in Cen A

SN 1987a -- a Type II SN

website source for many images shown here, plus good stellar evolution explanation

RELATIVITY

Concept of a World Line (video)

The Paradox of Simultaneity

The Solution to the Paradox

Relativistic Addition of Velocities

Relativistic Doppler Shift

The Equivalence Principle

Gravitational redshift

Gravitational redshift movie

Gravitational Bending of Starlight

Diagram of Precession of Mercury's Perihelion

Simulation of Orbit Precession

Real-World Relativity: the GPS System

BLACK HOLES

Warped Space around a Schwarzschild BH

Schwarzschild BH anatomy

That's all, folks!

Gravitational Lensing

Warped Space around a Kerr BH

Kerr BH anatomy

A Case in Point: Cygnus X-1
    The making of Cyg X-1
    Evidence of matter falling in
    Why we think Cyg X-1 is a black hole

Black hole size-environment relation

Black hole at the center of the Milky Way

Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies

Here is the first observational evidence of a star being tidally disrupted by a black hole!

Black holes in general

Black Hole FAQ I.

Black Hole FAQ II.

More Black Hole info

DISCOVERING THE UNIVERSE

Homogeneity vs. Isotropy

Large-Scale Galaxy Distribution

Herschel's universe

Interactive NGC Catalog

Drawings of the time

Globular Cluster NGC 6093

Shapley's globular cluster results from Jim Schombert's Galaxy page (an excellent resource)

The Distribution of Globular Clusters in the Milky Way

The Shapley-Curtis Debate and the Scale of the Universe main page
three-paragraph summary
"lesson plan"

Cepheid variable stars on the HR Diagram

Cepheid variable light curves

Cepheid Period-Luminosity Relation

Demonstration of Cepheid P-L Relation

Hubble Tuning Fork of Galaxy Types

Hunting for Cepheid Variables in M100

Hubble's original graph from 1929

Modern Hubble Diagram with Type Ia SN

How our measurement of the Hubble Constant has changed with time

Redshifts in Galaxies

Expansion of the universe animation

Raisin Bread analogy

Clip from "Annie Hall"

Possible Geometries

R(t) possibilities

k=0

Why you're not expanding - 1

Why you're not expanding - 2

Why you're not expanding - 3

Why you're not expanding - 4

GENERAL COSMOLOGY

Some of my notes that may be helpful:
metrics and geometry
the relationship of observed properties and redshift
the derivation of the Friedmann Equation
the cosmological constant
inter-relationships in the Standard Model
thermal equilibrium
age of the universe
timetable of the universe

the proton-proton cycle

triple-alpha cycle

abundances of the elements

Nuclear Production in Stars

R(t) comparison

Comparison of matter and radiation densities

Electron scattering

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (temp & time)

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (Ω_B)

A good summary page of modern cosmology

Blackboard: Scientific American articles on "Misconceptions about the Big Bang"; "Gravitational Lenses"; "Dark Energy"

Blackboard: New York Times Magazine article on Dark Energy

SN Ia evidence for acceleration

SN Ia R(t)

A universe with Λ>0 can be older

Geometry and angular size

Geometry and galaxy counts

Mass density in the universe

graph of Ω_M-Ω_Λ with observations

Age of the Universe

The all-important w

Future of the universe depends on the source of dark energy

Standard Model R(t) applet with adjustable H_o and Ω values

Applet that plots age, size & lookback time. Click on "APPLET" in the upper left corner to start.

Another R(t) applet

History of the Universe (Shockwave required)

A Tour Through the Big Bang

THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND

The Cosmic Microwave Background

Olbers' Paradox

Last scattering surface

Spectrum from COBE

Interpreting all-sky maps

COBE maps

CBR Dipole anisotropy celestial map

COBE-WMAP movie

Gravitational instability - seeds top view

"Gravitational perturbations as ripples" movie

Origin and Significance of Fluctuations (from Physics Today online)

Sound horizon

Thermal history --> acoustic oscillations

Spatial inhomogeneity becomes angular anisotropy

Fluctuation size and geometry movie

The CMB power spectrum

How baryon density, Ω_B, affects the power spectrum

How total matter density, Ω₀h², affects the power spectrum

WMAP fingerprint matching movie

BACK TO THE PAST: STRUCTURE

Schombert's page on structure

Simulation of MACHO event

Light bending (from http://atropos.as.arizona.edu/aiz/teaching/xiaohui.html)

Gravitational lens simulation (from http://atropos.as.arizona.edu/aiz/teaching/xiaohui.html)

Gravitational lensing

Structure formation animation from initial fluctuations (from Martin White's page)

Gas density evolution animation with cosmological constant (from Martin White's page)

Pie slice from CfA survey

Pie slice from 2DF survey

CDM simulation pie slice of SDSS survey

Pie slice from real SDSS survey

HST COSMOS DM survey map

Dark Matter serves as scaffold for structure

Structure evolution movie from WMAP

Reionization

Reionization explanation

Reionization simulation (from http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~ritzervj/Research/Reionization.html)

Large-scale ionization structure 100 Mpc co-moving cube with 4.2 billion particles

Planck satellite

EVEN FARTHER BACK: INFLATION

Force unification

Force unification - limits

The horizon problem

Omega shouldn't be ~1

The horizon problem solved

The resulting observable universe

Inflation flattens geometry

Guth discusses inflation (part 1)

Guth discusses inflation (part 2)

A very readable explanation of inflation by Guth himself (from 10 years ago, and anticipating the results from COBE and WMAP, but still relevant)

THE FUTURE/SPECULATION

Levels of multiverses

Level I

Level II

Level II multiple universes

Level II parameters

Level III

Example of many worlds

Level IV

Cosmic Collision: The End of the Milky Way from The Space Telescope Science Institute

Supercomputer Simulation of the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy in a future collision

The New Hubble Ultra Deep Field - these are all galaxies!

...and its location in the history of the Universe

Universe Timeline

The Theory Sweepstakes

Jim Schombert's cosmology course website -- EXCELLENT REFERENCE! Use it as a supplement to your textbook.

Stephen Hawking's public lectures, downloadable as .pdf files, for use with Adobe Acrobat Reader; can be printed out.
Titles include:
Space and Time Warps
The Beginning of Time
Does God Play Dice?
Life in the Universe

TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY: SN2006GY

IMAGES, STARS & SKY

Hubble Space Telescope Latest Information

SKYLIGHTS: Weekly Astronomy News & Images

Stars: Portraits of Stars and Their Constellations

Sky & Telescope Interactive Star Charts