Just the Maps & Views!-While
far from complete, these downloaded views provide for a satisfying overview
of North American Weather.
Astronomy
Instructional Materials
The Astronomy
Picture of the Day. Each day, a different image or photograph of our
fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written
by a professional astronomer.
The Inclined Plane Experiments "Galileo used an Inclined Plane to "slow" gravity down and get a handle on the Acceleration of Gravity.
Galileo discovered, from one second to the next as a ball rolls down an inclined plane, the ratios
of the distances covered increase by odd numbers, by intervals of 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. regardless of the angle of the plane.
He found that the total distance covered is proportional to the square of the time.This
Excellent Quicktime Movie demonstrates this principle."
Comprehensive site with numerous links to Albert
Enstein
Aristarchus
of Samos Aristarchus was a mathematician and astronomer who is celebrated
as the exponent of a Sun-centred universe and for his pioneering attempt
to determine the sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon.
Titan
Titan is the fifteenth of Saturn's known satellites and the largest.
A very initeresting moon. Some say it may represent what the earth's atmosphere
was like when the solar system first formed.
A key discovery, in the articulation and eventual acceptance of the "Copernican System,"
was the understanding of
Planetary Retrograde Motion. Man, what a key insight! Tunc Tezel
contributed an awesome animated gif of Jupiter and Saturn (APOD 12/20/01)
demonstrating their retrograde dance
across the heavens. The animated sequence combines 23 pictures
taken at approximately 2 week intervals from June 2000 through May 2001. Terrific!
The plate tectonic images and movies come from Dr. Steven Schafersman's excellent Plate Tectonics site. Please visit the site for a much more complete treatment of
plate tectonics.
The earth's crust consists of a mosaic of plates along whose boundaries occur the most interesting geology on
earth. Divergent boundaries dominate the sea floor. Oceanic ridges
extend over 42,000 miles in the Atlantic, Pacifc and Indian Oceans.
This Quicktime movie illustrates some of the important geologic processes common along oceanic ridges.
At transform boundaries there is no subduction, convergence or
divergence--crust is neither created nor destroyed. Rather, the
earth's crust moves in opposite directions along a stressed boundary.
An excellent example is the San Andreas fault in California. This
Quicktime movie illustrates some of the geologic processes present along transform boundaries.
The earth's crust is very dynamic. Continents have come together
and separated at least once in the geologic past. Pangaea is the
name given to the most recent supercontinent. Pangea broke up
into a northern landmass called Laurasia and a southern supercontinent
called Gowndwana. This Quicktime movie illustrates the breakup of Laurasia and Gowndwana into the modern day configuration of continents.
Quicktime Movie-
A circular structure, a possible meteor impact crater, was observed on
a 3-D seismic dataset from James River, Alberta.The
structure has a diameter of 4.8km and a central uplift with a diameter of
2.3km and is about 400m thick. H. Isaac, R. Stewart, and H. Bland developed
a Quicktime Movie of the feature!.
US Naval Observatory- Astronomical Applications computes, from fundamental
astronomical reference data, the position, brightness, and other observable
characteristics of celestial bodies, as well as the circumstances of astronomical
phenomena.
May 31, 2001--"During an eclipse of Jupiter's moon Io on January 1, 2001,
NASA's Cassini spacecraft recorded glows from auroras and volcanoes on Io." The bright white glows are volcanic eruptions. The blues are probably
sulfur dioxide. AMAZING! View the Animated Gif Visit the JPL Press Release for a detailed description.
This NASA quicktime animation
shows several of the comet fragments approaching and striking a rotating
Jupiter.
-Quicktime Movies
The spectacular "Ice Moon" Europa.
The surface of Europa is dynamic
and chaotic. The ice surface is continualy melting and refreezing.
Ever had a "wedgy?" Well, Europa's surface is a potpourii
of shifting ice wedges which probably make Europa one of the most
dynamic surfaces in the solar system.
Ever wonder how a spacecraft gets to Saturn? It's kind of like a "Gravity
Slingshot" as shown in this quicktime animation of the Cassini Flight
to Saturn.
A quicktime movie of the dynamic
cloud patterns of Uranus. Because Uranus' axis of rotation is tilted
into the ecliptic plane, One pole is heated while the other is put
into the deep freeze for decades. (Remember, it's all relative). This results
in Uranus' Weather! From the CNN website.
Check out these WWW sources! These Solar sites will allow you to closely coordinate your
telescope observations with day-to-day solar activity. Amazing stuff!
A Quicktime Movie ~ 2 MB of the Suns Lower Corona-From the Stanford
Solar Center. This site presents a collection of fun educational activities
based on Solar Oscillations Investigation (SOI) and Solar and Heliospheric
Observatory (SOHO) data. A Fantastic SITE!!
Eclipse MPEG Movie~1.5 MB Oct 24,
1995 by the Japanese Yohkoh ("Sunbeam") Soft X-ray Telescope
(SXT) covering the period when the path of totality on the earth's surface
was sweeping eastward from Myanmar across Thailand and Cambodia.
Fred Espenak of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center caught this Earth-Based Imagery~925 K Quicktime Movie
of the Oct '95 Eclipse in India.
M87 is thought to have a massive Black Hole at its center. According to a CNN article, this
black hole is thought to have a mass of 3 billion suns! This CNN quicktime animation shows
black hole jets in motion and streaming from the center
of what might be analogous to the huge blackhole at the center of M87.
In the spring, many amateurs turn their telescopes toward
the constellation Virgo. In amateur telescopes, these objects look like
smudges. These smudges are actually galaxies many millions of light years
away!
Many old stars shed material in the later phases of their life. This HST
public information quicktime movie is a terrific animation
of the Helix Nebula It is a good example of a Nova. The Helix nebula is
visible in your typical backyard telescope.
Situated just East of the Keyhole Nebula in the Southern Sky, lies the super-luminous
eruptive star Eta
Carinae. This strange star is is over one million times brighter than
our sun and over one hundred times more massive, making it possibly the most
massive star in the Galaxy.
Parallax is used to measure the distance of stars relatively close to earth.
The illusion of star movement is due to the revolution of the earth around
the sun. Two orbital periods are shown here--the second revolution has the
star twice the distance. This excellent quicktime
animation is from Professor
Richard Pogge's Astronomy 162 Resource Page , Ohio State University.
Star Birth and Other Neat Hubble Animations-Quicktime Movies