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Astronomy 263/264
Current Events

Heavens-Above website will show you how to find planets, constellations, and satellites from almost any location on Earth! Find out where to look to see an Iridium Satillite flare from Lafayette this week.

The Mars Odyssey was launched on April 7, and will arrive at Mars on October 24, 2001. The Odyssey will look for evidence of water on Mars, map minerals on the surface, and look at the radiation levels near Mars. To see the latest images from Odyssey, look here.

See the latest images from the Mars Global Surveyor satellite. Very interesting high-resolution pictures, and recent updates!

The NASA Planetary Data System offers a really interesing MAP-A-PLANET site that allows you to create your own custom map of two planets and four moons. You can zoom in on any area of interest on the surface of Mars, Venus, our Moon, or three of Jupiter's Moons.

Check out the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and see what there is to see with X-Ray vision.

On December 18, 1999, Terra was launched, and continues to observe the Earth. Terra will monitor climate changes over the next 15 years. This website has pictures of the amounts of carbon monoxide concentrations around the world, fires, and wind speeds.

See how the International Space Station is faring. You can even use this link, to find out when you can see the Space Station with your naked eye!

today@nasa.gov has all the latest news. They also have a schedule of the next few expected launch dates. Nasa's main site is here.

Look for more news at the on-line journal The Universe Today. They also have a HUGE list of astronomy-related websites.

Launched in 1989, the Galileo Mission has been orbiting Jupiter since 1995. On January 3, 2000 Galileo passed by Europa, and found new evidence that Europa has a liquid ocean. Also check out the NSSDC Galileo site.

The Hipparcos satellite was launched in 1989 and collected high-quality data on the precise positions, parallaxes and propermotions of stars. In 1993 the mission was terminated when all the missions goals were attained.

Learn about the Cassini mission to Saturn. Launched in October 1997, it will arrive at Saturn in 2004 to survey the moons and drop a probe on the moon Titan.

If you're interested in searching for alien life forms, SETI is the home page for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. You can also see the message that we broadcast to the globular cluster M13 in 1974. Don't worry about this causing an alien invasion, though. Since M13 is about 21,000 lightyears away, they won't receive the message until around 22,974 A.D., and we wouldn't receive their reply until after 43,974 A.D..

The Bradford Robotic Telescope allows you to use (for free) a 46 cm telescope located in England. For details, go to the site and browse. After registering, you can request that the telescope observe one of several common objects, or can observe at a particular RA and DEC.