For Space & Astronomy Buffs

[tysroby]

Websites

Sky-Map

The site features a high resolution sky map with celestial objects that are outside our solar system mapped out. The sky map interactive chart is useful for both amateur and professional astronomers. There are options you can pick to view the skies. You can also use the chart to browse all space and astronomy related news via the News@Sky section. Sky-Map is still an ongoing project.

Gigagalaxy Zoom

Gigagalaxy Zoom shows the full sky as it appears to the unaided eye. The second zoom view is of one that appears with a hobby telescope. The final zoom level reveals the details of an iconic nebula. The idea behind the project is to serve as an aid for the untrained observer when he (or she) looks up at the night sky without the help of a telescope. The ultra-high resolution zoom levels can be used as a visual aid.

Galaxy Zoo

If you have some basic knowledge of galaxies and how they are classified, this worldwide project could do with your help. It’s all about directing the power of Internet users to work through sixty million galaxies and help classify the galaxies according to specific patterns like shapes of spirals and color. The space images have come from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This is the second installment of the volunteer project. A sister project is Moon Zoo.

Neave Planetarium

This is a browser-based simulated planetarium that allows you to observe stars, constellations, and planets by specific location. The interactive website is Flash based and the most surprising thing about it is that it’s the handiwork of one man who loves designing interactive tools. (As an aside, check out his other cool tools too).

We Choose the Moon

Last year it was the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing. The site was set up to commemorate that historic event. But you can still take a peek into the past on this interactive website. The mission is recreated in precise detail right from pre-launch with actual voiceovers. You can change the views and also click on hotspots to view related media galleries. The site is divided into 11 sections where you can watch photos, videos, and other archival content. The site is an effort of the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Check out a similar celebratory website here which is about the 50th anniversary of NASA which fell in 2008.

Explore Mars Now

Landing on Mars is an inevitability. This website simulates a tour through the Martian landscape and a human colonized habitat. The walkthrough is a lesson in the science, technology, and design challenges that will be required to land man on the Red Planet.

HubbleSite

Bringing the magnificent images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) back down to Earth, HubbleSite is the place for all things Hubble. Its NewsCenter will keep you updated on what’s going on, you can check out HST’s discoveries, or just learn more about the telescope itself.

Of course, Hubble’s captivating masterpieces are there for viewing and the site goes all-out with the images. Check out the telescope’s talents in the picture album, download wallpaper, watch videos in the movie theater, and take image tours. It’s all available in the gallery section.

SpaceDaily

For news about nothing but space, SpaceDaily is the online news resource for industry professionals and fans alike. The website plainly displays news content, frequently updated with the latest happenings.

The site also provides a variety of newsletters and feeds covering various topics like space tourism, space war, and nuclear power.

NASA

NASA’s website is the granddaddy of them all. You could literally spend hours browsing the site and still not even scratch the surface. It’s chock-full with all the latest official news, information on its missions, multimedia, and much more.

The website’s news section covers all the latest happenings at NASA, frequently updated with exclusive images and videos. There’s also various news topics to check out, like Moon & Mars and Aeronautics. NASA’s multimedia section is where the fun’s at, though.

Its image galleries are stunning, audio and video podcasts are available, and interactive features let you take control, like touring the International Space Station (ISS) or exploring the Apollo 11 landing site.

Tools

Microsoft WorldWide Telescope

WorldWide Telescope enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world. Experience narrated guided tours from astronomers and educators featuring interesting places in the sky.

Now you can use WorldWide Telescope to explore the features of Mars as never before, thanks to the addition of more than 13,000 incredibly detailed images of Mars from various NASA spacecraft. Zoom in on the Red Planet and experience the Martian surface in unbelievably lifelike 3-D rendering, and learn more about our planetary neighbor with new interactive guided tours of Mars. And the enhancements to WWT don’t stop there. Now the WWT view of the night sky is even more amazing, with a seamless, high-resolution representation that smooths out the contours between discrete images. Gone are the visible “tiles” – those sharp edges where individual telescopic photos were combined to create the night sky panorama. This enhanced view, called the Terapixel sky image, provides an extraordinary sensation of panning the sky with the world’s most powerful telescope.

Download v.2.7.19.1 Apogee Beta

Run Web Client (requires Silverlight 3 ; also runs on Mac OS X)

Homepage

Celestia

Celestia is real-time 3D space simulation program which lets you travel through our solar system and to over 100,000 stars in our galaxy. Celestia is a free real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions.

Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.

All travel in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across.

A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.

The Navigation menu contains 'Solar System Browser' and 'Star Browser' options. The Solar System Browser displays a window with a tree view of all the objects in the nearest solar system (if there is one within a light year of your current osition.).

Clicking on the name of any object in the window will select it. You can then use the Center or Go To buttons to display that object in the main Celestia window.

Download v.1.6.0

Download Portable

Download add-ons

Games

Nemexia

Nemexia is a FREE space themed OSG that inroduces some interesting game concepts to the genre.

Players pick from one of three races, the Confederation (Humans), Terteths (Robots), or the Noxis (Aliens), and control a planet. It has the traditional OSG concepts of resource management, building construction, and raising an army, which makes it very accessable. In addition to the 3 main resources (Metal, Minerals, Gas), there is also Energy. Energy isn’t generated per hour like most resources, but is used as a constant cap for building construction. For example, if you have a Solar Plant that grants 10 Energy, and each buildings costs 1 Energy, you can only build 10 buildings. If you demolish one of your buildings you’d have 1 Energy again, and so on. It functions very similarly to population in Khan Wars.

Nemexia divides each planet into three zones, Resources, Industry, and Government, and these have prominant links for easy navigation. My only qualm about the zones is that sometimes they don’t make much sense. For example, the Vault, which stores Ships, is placed in the Resource Zone, and sometimes the game refers to the Government zone as the Military Zone.

The energy system gets more intersting later in the game. Each player’s Planet is part of a Galaxy, much like Islands in Ikariam. The Solar Plants that give you energy are based off the Galaxy’s sun, which grow old over time and give less energy. To win the game an alliance has to harvest crystals from suns by attacking it. Each successful attack reduces the sun’s energy, so all Players in that galaxy are going to want to defend their sun.

Source: Most of the information was gathered from makeusof.com

[BKAMO]

Great stuff! Thank you.