Don Shedrick

Nov , 2000

November DAS Focus

COMPUTERS IN ASTRONOMY by Don Shedrick

One of the rewarding aspects of our Astronomy hobby is the sense of community among our fellow hobbyists, and the sharing of information and experiences. Astronomy clubs and star parties are prime examples, but you can expand the scope of your contacts through various on line forums, newsgroups, mailing lists, and discussion channels, as well as Web search sites.

If you would like to see what other astronomy clubs are up to, you can visit the web site of any of hundreds of clubs around the world listed on Yahoo at: http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Astronomy/Amateur_Astronomy/Organizations/Clubs/

You may pick up some ideas for our club!

Subscribers to America Online and CompuServe have access to forums offering a wide range of astronomy and space related information including news postings, discussion forums, message boards, downloadable programs, etc. In AOL, keywords "astronomy" and "space" get you the Astronomy Club and Space Exploration Online respectively. In CompuServe, keyword "Go Astronomy" gets you the Astronomy and Space section of Science Sphere, "Go Spacex" gets you the Space Exploration Forum, and "Go Spaceflight" gets you the Space Flight Forum.

 

MSN has dozens of space related communities listed at

http://groups.msn.com/browse.msnw?catid=299

The largest is the Astronomy Forum, which has a message board, photo albums, chat, and files. The nice thing about the MSN communities is you do not have to subscribe to their Internet access service to join one of their communities.

 

Philip S. Harrington, author of STAR WARE, et al, is the moderator of the "Talking Telescopes" List. This is an eGroup devoted to the discussion of astronomical equipment, including telescopes, binoculars, eyepieces, books and star atlases, software, and more. Have a question or comment about astronomical equipment? This is the place to visit at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/telescopes/

Other eGroups for Astronomy can be viewed at:

http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/dir/Science/Astronomy

One of the oldest and most popular online forums is Usenet, a collection of thousands of newsgroups on which you can discuss anything and everything. There are a number of Usenet newsgroups devoted to astronomy. You will need a news-reader to read and post messages in newsgroups. A newsreader is built into Netscape, and is included as a part of Microsoft Outlook Express. So, if you have a Web browser you probably already have a newsreader. If you don’t, or you would like to learn more about Usenet and other newsreader programs, check the information on Yahoo’s Usenet site at:

http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Software/Internet/Usenet/

To access a Usenet newsgroup, you will need the name of your Internet news server. This information is provided by your Internet service provider (ISP). If you do not know this information, contact your ISP. Further information on configuring Microsoft Outlook Express to subscribe to a newsgroup can be found at:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q171190

Alternatively, you can use the Google Groups to access any of the Usenet newsgroups. Get help and info at:

http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/help.html

A list of Google Groups is at:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=sci.astro

Each of the newsgroups devoted to astronomy discussions have their own purpose. The main newsgroup is sci.astro. Volunteers maintain a list of frequently asked questions, with answers, at: http://sciastro.astronomy.net

The newsgroup I have been using is sci.astro.amateur. This is geared toward the amateur astronomer, with a lot of good questions posted on observing, equipment, software, Web sites, etc., and a lot of equally good answers, experiences, and advice given by amateurs from around the world, and by well known authors and heads of astronomy equipment manufacturers.

If you’re interested in planetariums, you’ll want to check out sci.astro.planetarium. Employees and volunteers of planetariums discuss presentations, educational programs, and related issues. More information on the newsgroup, including a FAQ, is on the Web at: http://www.lochness.com/pltref/sapfaq.html

The newsgroup sci.astro.hubble is a read only forum where you can see what observing programs the telescope is performing on a given day and what is planned for the near future. Press releases about discoveries made with Hubble are also posted here. More information about the newsgroup is at: http://tycho.la.asu.edu/sah.html

Additional space newsgroups include the moderated groups (to screen and clear content) sci.astro.research, sci.space.science, sci.space.tech, and sci.space.news, and the unmoderated sci.space.policy, sci.space.history, and sci.space.shuttle. A listing of all science newsgroups can be found at: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/by-newsgroup/sci/

Mailing Lists are an easy and convenient way to stay connected with the astronomical world events. News oriented astronomy sites offer signups for emails of news or events. You receive the news as an email in your own email account on a regular basis. One popular example includes news based on the radio show Earth and Sky, with info at: http://www.earthsky.com. SpaceWeather.com has science news and information about the Sun-Earth environment, with occasional messages on solar storms, sunspots, solar wind, predicting possible aurora conditions, and other things going on in the solar system. A similar mailing list with science stories and involvement projects related to NASA research has 3-5 new stories a week, each announced by an e-mail to your address. You can subscribe to both at: http://science.nasa.gov/news/subscribe.asp?checked=sngsw

Other mailing lists related to amateur telescope making, astrophotography, and more can be found at the

astronomy section of Topica email and newsletter site, an online database of over 90,000 mailing lists, at:

http://www.topica.com/dir/?cid=189 /

If you can’t sleep and even your dog is ignoring you, you can try interactive chat on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) discussion channels. For more information on IRC, including how to find the appropriate software for your computer, visit http://www.connected-media.com/IRC or http://www.funet.fi/~irc/. The main astronomy IRC discussion channel is #astronomy. More detail on this is at http://www.saunalahti.fi/~riku/astronomy/.