. Observatory dome near Victoria BC.

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Astronomy Telescopes from Meade, Celestron, TeleVue, Takahashi, accessories and eyepieces, CCD imaging cameras from SBIG and more.

123greetings.com/events/telescope_day
Astronomy related greetings.

Astronomy Magazine
A popular magazine of astronomical news.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Manages lots of good science missions, Mars Rovers and so forth.  JPL is located in Pasadena, California.

NPR Science Friday (Talk of the Nation)
Science talk show each Friday on NPR.  Good astronomy coverage.  Listen in Real Audio from NPR web site.  Past programs archived.

Space.com
Up to date news and information about space exploration.

Cern Lab
High energy particle accelerator lab located in Switzerland (where the web was born).  Research into the nature of mater, space, time, dimensions --- those cosmic questions.

Triumf
Accelerator lab probing cosmic questions in physics, medical research also.  Located near UBC Campus in Vancouver, BC Canada.

Fermilab
National accelerator lab in USA.  Explores cosmic questions of physics.  Located near Chicago, IL.

Boomerang
Balloon borne telescope has circumnavigated Antarctica a few times mapping the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation left over from big bang.  Looks for patterns, or clumps, in early universe.  Sheds light on such questions as, "is space flat or curved." 

Trans. Iron Galactic Element Recorder
Balloon collects samples of cosmic ray atomic nucleuses that originate in galaxy.

Observatories

Viper South Pole Microwave Telescope
Mapping cosmic background radiation.

Hat Creek Radio Observatory
Allen Telescope Array.  42 dishes on line October 11 2007. Total of 350 planned.  Large array searching for potential signals from extraterrestrial life, also other radio astronomy tasks.  Paul Allen, SETI Institute and University of California, Berkeley among the cooperating entities. 

Magdalena Ridge Observatory
In New Mexico, a high tech array of optical telescopes high in mountains to bring high resolution images of astronomical objects.

Keck Twins
Worlds largest optical telescopes.  Located on a 13,000 Ft.. mountain in Hawaii.

Mauna Kea Observatories
Guide to many facilites on top of this mountain in Hawaii.

Salt
Largest telescope in Southern hemispere.  In South Africa.

Palomar
Was largest telescope in world for many years.  Still in cutting edge of
astronomy with adaptive optics, inferetometry and more.

European Southern Observatory
View from Southern hemisphere.

Kitt Peak
Multi mirror optical telescope.  Solar telescope and more.  Located near Tucson Arizona.

Mount Graham Observatory
Located in South East Arizona.  Several research telescopes including the Large Binocular Telescope.

Amanda Neutrino Telescope
Located under an ice sheet in Antarctica.  Pioneering ways to look at the sky by detecting ghostly neutrino particles which pass through matter unscathed and are hard to detect.  Neutrinos are different than electromagnetic radiation, which most telescopes are confined to. 

Gemini Observatory
Operated by Kitt Peak.  Located in Chile.

The Anglo-Australian Observatory

Dominion Observatory
Near Victoria, BC Canada.

McDonnell Observatory
Austin Texas.

Observatory at Canary Islands

Arecibo
Radio antenna dish built into bowl shaped valley in Puerto Rico.  World's largest radio dish.

Owens Valley Radio Array
California

Very Large Array (VLA)
Huge array of steer able antennas for radio astronomy.  Located in New Mexico.

National Radio Observatories
Links to several radio observatories.

Greenbank
Radio Telescope.

Sudbury Neutrino Telescope
Looks for neutrinos from well insulated vantage point in bottom of old nickel mine near Sudbury, Ontario Canada.

Kamiokande Neutrino Detector
Operated by University of Tokyo, Japan.

Undersea Neutrino Detector
Being built under Mediterranean off southern France. 

Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver
ACBAR  Located in Antartica.  Looks for densities, clumps and structure in cosmic back ground radiation.  Learn about early universe soon after big bang.  Find out about dark matter, dark energy and so forth.

Apache Telescope in New Mexico
Sky surveys, such as Sloan Survey and other observations.

Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory
Spread out over Argentina plain the size of Rhode Island.  International project.

Canada France Hawaii Telescope
Very large digital camera called Megaprime.  Extra wide field view on an otherwise smaller telescope in Hawaii.

Australian Gravity Wave Experiment

Ligo
Multi site gravity wave detector.  Hanford, Washington. Livingston, Louisiana.

Gravity Wave Experiment
University of Louisiana.

Astronomy Satellites

Hubble Space Telescope.
A fantastic orbiting observatory in mostly visible light.  Great photo archive. 

Suzaku
Japan's new X-ray observatory and spectrometer.  Launched July 10 05

Chandra X-ray Observatory
Explores universe in high energy x-ray frequencies.  Views such things as black hole accretion disks, neutron stars, exploding galaxies and more.

Newton
European X-ray Observatory.  A great partner to Chandra.

Spitzer Orbiting Inferred Telescope
Launched August 2003.  One of the great observatories, like Hubble.  Designed to look at sky in inferred frequencies.

Gravity Probe B
Tests Einstein's theories about gravity distorting space/time.  Uses very sophisticated gyros to test things like frame dragging.  Has been talked about and planned since 1959, formally since 1963.  Finally funded, then launched April 20 2004.

Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer
Detects changes in x-rays over short, or long times.

Integral
Looking at universe in Gamma Rays.  Also able to detect x-ray and visible light to study things across much of the spectrum. 

Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer
Remember "Black Light" posters from the 1960s?  They would glow by converting ultraviolet light, from a so called "black light," into visible wavelengths.  The universe has a lot of ultraviolet light as well, but it is best viewed from orbit, above the obscuring atmosphere of Earth.

Galex
Explores galaxies in ultraviolet spectrum.

High Energy Transient Explorer
Lies in wait for mysterious gamma ray bursts that suddenly cause the universe to flash, like someone just took a picture.  Tries to pinpoint where burst originated so other astronomers can look to see what is there.  Something must be causing those huge explosions; two neutron stars colliding? a super super nova?

Swift
Studies gamma ray bursts with three telescopes to get data from across a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum. 

Chips
Looks a plasma, dust and so forth from interstellar origins.

Wire
Lost it's cooling fluid so primary mission had to be scrapped, but someone came up with a neat idea.  Use one of the onboard telescopes to detect slight fluctuations in the brightness of nearby stars.  Opens up fields such as "stellar seismology."

Most
Sometimes called the Humble Space Telescope.  Lots of bang for the buck.  A Canadian project, from UBC in Vancouver.  More sophisticated look at variations in stellar brightness.  Should be launched in late 2002.  Looks like a suitcase.

The Sub Millimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite
(SWAS) Looks at chemical composition of gas clouds.  Explores star formation. 

Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
WMAP.  Look for patterns in cosmic background radiation.  Explores cosmological questions.  Recently provided great look at patterns in cosmic back ground radiation.  Exploring many cosmic questions such as age and shape of universe.

Chinese moon probe
Search for information about Chang'e 1.  Orbiting the moon.  Launched October 24 07.  Best sites are news sites that keep changing.

Dawn Spacecraft
On an 8-year journey to asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres.  Launched
Sept. 27 07.

Venus Express
European Space Agency.  Explore Venus from orbit.  Similar to Mars Express.  Launched Nov. 05

Cassini
Orbiting Saturn.  Will send probe down to the moon called Titan December 2004-January 2005.  Next close pass of Titan, October 26 2004.

New Horizon's
Aprox. 10 year mission to Pluto.  Launched Jan 19 2006.

Messenger
On a 7 year jouney to Mercury.  Will orbit.  Several flybys of Venus and Mercury are planned before orbit insertion.  Explore these planents and solar system close to the Sun.

Hayabusa
Launched from Japan May 9 2003.  Plans to visit a near Earth asteroid in 2005.  It scoops up samples from several spots and returns a capsule back to Earth by 2007.  

Mars Express
European Space Agency's probe to look for signs of life and water on Mars.  One of the experiments will look for gaseous by products, from possible life somewhere on the surface, in the martian atmosphere.

Mars Exploration Rovers
Two NASA missions to land rovers on Mars.  Explore geology, look for signs of water, erosion and so forth.

Mars Odyssey
Orbits and looks for Chemical elements and minerals on Martian surface. Seeing if there is water in different places on Mars.

Rosetta
Plans to orbit a comet nucleus in 2014.  Also has a probe to land on nucleus.  Will pass a few things on the way, but most of trip plans call for being in dormant mode.  Launched March 2004, European Space Agency mission. 

Stardust 
To bring comet samples back to Earth by 2006.

Voyagers
Voyagers 1 and 2 are now the "farthest out" man made objects.  They flew past Jupiter and Saturn.  One of them went on to skirt by Uranus and Neptune.  Launched over 20 years ago, they are now headed out of solar system sending back data.  Looking for boundary between solar wind and interstellar space among other interesting things to detect.  Analyzing charged particles, magnetic fields and so forth.

Exploring The Sun

Stereo
Launched Oct. 25 06.  Two spacecraft with identical instruments will look at sun from two different vantage points in space.  Create a stereoscopic view.

Hinode
From Japan.  Advanced X-ray telescope and other instruments to look at Sun's magnetic fields, corona and other aspects of solar Physics.  Launched Sept 22 06.

Soho
Sits about 1 million miles toward the Sun from Earth.  Samples sunlight that is headed to Earth.  Lots of sophisticated instruments.  Helio seismology and more.

Advanced Composition Explorer
Satellite detects solar and galactic particles.

Transition Region and Coronal Explorer 
Views solar corona and transition region between photosphere and corona.

Ulysses
Looks down (if there is such a thing as down out there) on the poles of the sun.  While other satellites are in plane with sun's equator, Ulysses is only one to orbit over north and south poles of sun.   From this vantage point, it has a unique perspective.

Solar wind earth interaction

SXT
Studies x-rays from solar atmosphere.  Japan.

High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager
Looks at solar flares special x-rays.
ray

Some Past Missions

Mars Global Surveyor
Orbits Mars.  Takes many pictures.  Maps surface.

Genesis Mission
Sample solar wind, bring back to Earth 2004.

Smart 1
European Space Agency robotic mission to the moon.  Testing an ion engine. 

Deep Impact
Part of Deep Impact smashes into a comet at 1:52 AM Eastern Daylight Time July 4th 2005.  Impact kicked up material from deeper inside a comet, supposedly less effected by the sun and space weathering.  This can provide a better look at pristine comet material.  Second part of spacecraft, after the impact probe separates, observed debris from close range.  Also observed from Earth.

Galileo Jupiter Mission
Orbited Jupiter.  Exploring planet and its many moons.  Mission had been extended several times.  Nearing end of its stabilizing propellant, plans called for crashing it into Jupiter, right before craft dies, so it doesn't contaminate Jupiter's moon Europa where life may exist.  Fantastic photos of Jupiter and its many moons, from up close, including the volcanoes on Io.

Near Orbit of Asteroid
Actually brushed onto asteroid at end of very successful mission of intimacy with asteroid.

Deep Space 1
Tested some new technology including an Ion Engine.  Flew by an asteroid also.