Stories of the Stars: Mizar. Artwork by Frank Paul
If you have any really cool starmapping links (or if you notice one of these links has succumbed to the horror of "link rot"and is no more), drop me an email! (nyrath at projectrho dot com)
Astronomy
A-M
- A Kid's Guide to Astronomy
- Links to astronomical educational websites aimed at children.
- Allexperts Astronomy Q&A
- Astronomers and other experts answer all your astronomy questions.
- Ansible Tech
- They specialize in real time space simulators and digital planetariums.
- Astrodynamic Constants and Parameters
- Comprehensive list of important constants for astronomical calculations.
- The Astronomy Nexus
- An incredibly useful site with lots of information about 3-D starmaps.
- Astronomy and numerical software source codes
- C source code for many astronomical applications, including planetary ephemerides and orbital motion.
- Astronomy Resources
- The Bad Astronomy Home Page
- A great site which exposes misleading, ill reported, and just plain wrong astronomy related stories in the news media and popular movies.
- Eric's Treasure Troves of Science
- A marvelous site containing extensive on-line encyclopedias of math and science, including astronomy.
- Extrasolar.net
- A very impressive Flash 3D map of the local stellar neighborhood. It has diagrams of the known extrasolar planets, and extensive search facilities.
- Extrasolar Planet Catalog
- Galaxy Map
- This is incredible. It is probably the most comprehensive and accurate map of the entire galaxy anywhere.
- The Hipparcos Star Catalog page
- Hipparchos catalogue: query form
- Hubble Space Telescope Pictures
- The Internet Stellar Database
- This is one honey of a site! It contains tons of in-depth detail on most of the stars within 75 light years. It is still a work in progress, but what is there is incredible. The author was inspired by the Internet Movie Database. Check it out!
- Jeff's Astronomy Resource Links
- The JPL's Solar System Simulator
- This NASA site allows one to input various planets and display how they would appear if you were standing on selected other planets.
N-Z
- Other Worlds, Distant Suns
- An impressive astronomical web site, including information on the currently known extrasolar planets, VRML demos of the closest 64 stars and bright stars within 100 light years, and tons of astronomical and aerospace links.
- Physical and Earth Sciences
- Tom Loredo's massive list of hot links to all sorts of astronomical and physics sites.
- Physics Reference
- Valuable reference site for physics compiled by the awesome Erik Max Francis. Topics include Kepler's Laws, a mini-encyclopedia of laws, rules, and terms in Physics, a note on orders of magnitude, and listings on notations, constants, SI prefixes, SI units and symbol. BOOKMARK THIS SITE!
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Project Rho Productions Store - My Cafe Press store, offering poser-sized 3D star maps among other things.
- SCI.ASTRO Faq
- The Frequently Asked Questions for the SCI.ASTRO Usenet Newsgroup. Lots of useful info here.
- Science Essays
- Essays by the incomparable Erik Max Francis, they will repay careful study. Topics include: Will the Sun Explode? Could Jupiter become a star? Geosynchronious and Geostaionary orbits. Black hole evaporation. Gravitational redshift. The Drake Equation. Dyson spheres. Why are the Niven rings unstable?
- Selden's List of Resources for Celestia
- Shuster Galactic Co-ordinate System
- This goes in depth mathematically into the subject of equitorial to galactic co-ordinate transformation, with other notes on interstellar navigation. Lots of meat here.
- Star View
- An excellent Java applet that allows one to view the closest 272 stars to the Sun. Written by Ed Hobbs.
- Stellarium Company
- They specialize in creating custom made 3-D starmaps for individuals and museums. Check them out!
- Stellarium app
- This is free open-source planetarium software for your computer. The source code is available on SourceForge.
- Stellar Cartography.
- This is Thomas Anderson's site, which has source code for generating list of connected stars using the "Delaunay construction algorithm".
- Stellar Cartography.
- Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center VizieR catalogue
- Beth and Richard Treitel's Quick and Dirty SF Science FAQ.
- This is a most valuable FAQ with quick and dirty answers to common questions in SF. Topics include The Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox, Stars and their planets ( including links to pages about Solar System planets ), Destroying the Earth, Types of Stardrive, leading quickly to questions of time travel and causality associated with FTL travel, Methods of getting into orbit in general, Orbital Elevators or beanstalks, Errors of Science in science fiction, and Weather on tidelocked planets.
- A View from the Back of the Envelope
- This site has some great information about visualizing "powers of ten" and the scale of the universe.
- Virtual Universe v1.0
- A VRML demonstration of the stars within 50 light years! Nice VRML from Don Ware.
- The Web Nebula site
- A fabulous site with photos and useful information on various nebulae.
Flat 2-Dimensional Sky Maps
- National Geographic Star Journey
- A web version of their popular "The Heavens" map, enhanced with images from the Hubble Space Telescope.
- Universe Today Space Links
- A large list of various space web links.
Starships
- Atomic Rockets
- Details on how to build various types of spacecraft, planetary missions, crew, life support, futuristic sidearms, and other goodies. With lots of equations!
- 3dCognition's Space Explorer game
- An educational game that allows one to navigate your spacecraft within the solar system or to the 48 nearest stars.
- ORBITER space flight simulator
- A stunning freespacefight simulator for the Windows platform.
- The Alcubierre "Warp Drive"
- A recent scientific paper in theroretical physics, suggesting a technique for making an object move faster than light by expanding and contracting the fabric of space. This is not SF, this is reality. (Of course, actually constructing a drive based upon these principles is far beyond our current technical know-how. Just like the Tipler Time Machine, which starts with "Take a cylinder of neutronium half a light year long, and spin it around it's axis with a velocity of half the speed of light...")
- The Alternate View: Space Drives
- An archive of the Alternate View articles from ANALOG magazine, including those specifically about cutting-edge physics as applied to spacecraft propulsion, written by physicist and SF author John Cramer.
- Classifications of FTL Stardrives in Science Fiction
- A catalog created by noted physicist and Hugo & Nebula award-winning SF author Geoffrey A. Landis, it classifies every stardrive that has ever appeared in SF (Yes, even Bill, the Galactic Hero's "Bloater" Drive, under type [2.2.2.2]). This is originally from a thread in the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.science, it appears here with Mr. Landis' permission.
- Modern Relativiy
- A great overview of General Relativity, with some sections on Alcubierre "warp" drive and Krasnikov Tube
- Electro-Gravitic References
- FTL Time Machine
- Physicist Christopher Neufeld's proof that faster than light travel is equivalent to a time machine.
- Megascaleand Space-Time Engineering
- Propulsion Systems
- courtesy of the Island One Society
- Reaction drives and deltavees
- Analysis of reaction drives and deta-V calculations by Erik Max Francis.
- Reaction Drive Formulaeand Starship Drives
- Derivations of the equations for rockets and discussion of possible starship drives, David Morgan-Mar. All sorts of useful equations.
- Relativity and FTL travel
- Starship Design HomePage
- Spacetime Hypersurfing
- A non-mathematical explaination of the Alcubierre "Warp Drive"
- The World, The Flesh, and The Devil
- An online version of the classic essay by J. Bernal, this was written in 1929 but lays the groundwork for L5 space colonies and cyborgs. SF Author Arthur C. Clarke notes that many of the ideas in this essay have still not been explored by SF authors. He also said that he will firmly refuse any request by fellow authors to borrow his copy.
- Warp Drive When?
- Extensive NASA site devoted to speculations about FTL spacedrives.
World Building and Starsystem Building
- Accrete home page
- Home of the Accrete program, a computer simulation of a nebula condensing into a solar system. It includes the source code for a Java applet.
- Accrete Java Applet
- An applet for synthesizing solar systems by Carl Burke. With the evaporation of Ian Burrell's site, this is the best Accrete site on the web.
- Alien Planet Designer
- A scientific site with lots of meat. Equations, references, the works.
- Captain Barcode's War Room
- Scroll down a bit to discover a wealth of links to world building web resources.
- CONTACT
- An organization who's members are WorldBuilders. They have an annual conference which attracts all sorts of scientists.
- Mark Stock's World Builder programs
- This is a site with Linux software for drawing images of world maps. Includes a link to David Allen's CDrift program.
- Planetary Climate Simulator
- A Windows program that simulates planetary weather. A download link, to the program and the code, is at the bottom of the page.
- Karl Kofoed's Galactic Geographic
- This series of stunning illustrations and realistic descriptions originally ran in the magazine Heavy Metal. Highly recommended!. You should buy the book.
- Megastructures in SF.
- A nice review of Ringworlds, Dyson spheres, and other megastructures. This site includes CGI images of the various structures, and a suggested reading list of SF novels about megastructures.
- Omega Point
- Cosmic engineering and the end of the universe.
- On Creating an Earthlike Planet
- Excellent tutorial on planet creation by Geoff Eddy, with equations and links.
- Planetary Classification List
- John Dollan's list of types of planets, broken down by Class, Type, and Subtype. Very well done.
- Planet Creation Kit
- The Signposts Timeline
- A marvelous site with a plausible future history.
- Star Gen
- A freeware program that generates solar system using the Accrete algorithm. Freeware for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and it even includes the source code!
- The Terraforming Information Pages
- The definitive web guide to Terraforming planets, by the man who wrote the definative bookon terraforming, Martyn Fogg.
- Useful equations for Astronomy, Space FAQ #4
- Lots of standard equations, values of constants, and other neat stuff.
- World Builder: A Modest Program for Designing Strange New Worlds
- A computer program written in BASIC by Stephen Kimmel.
- World Builders presents: Epona
- This is a professionally designed world that grew out of a CONTACT conference. Very impressive.
- World Building
- More worldbuilding with a RPG slant. Lots of additional links.
- World Building 101
- World building, with some additional science fiction material. Lots of additional links. They conduct an on-line lab session every Thursday at 9:30pm EST on Talk City's chat server "chat.talkcity.com".
- World Building Class
- A course taught at University of California. Strictly hard-core science. Lots of additional links.
