Astronomy
Welcome to the Department of Astronomy!
Astronomy is the science of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere, such as stars, planets, comets, aurorae, galaxies, and the cosmic background radiation. It is concerned with the formation and development of the universe, the evolution and physical and chemical properties of celestial objects and the calculation of their motions.
Welcome
Astronomy is a new Department at Wikiversity, and it's growth depends on participation from everyone who seeks to learn here. The basic philosophy is to learn by doing. This is reflected in the content of lessons and activities. But this means more than just reading a lesson and following the directions. We also hope that you will participate in the process of creating lessons.
To get started try the lesson on Stellar Evolution or the activity on Observational astronomy.
For a glimpse of some of the topics that we hope to cover in the future see the Topic:Astronomy/Courses.
If you have any questions about astronomy or requests for topics that you would like to learn, post them to the astronomy help desk.
Things to do
- Cleanup all astronomy related pages and organize
- Link to information about supernova/asteroid online searches
- Link to data sources
- Link to amateur astronomers societies (and get amateur astronomers to this page)
- Load in the astrophysics source code library
- Create links at Wikipedia to related pages here.
Courses
Get to work writing courses! Simply make a link to the name of the course and start writing!
Level 1
- Introduction to Astronomy
- Solar System and Stellar Astronomy
- Galactic and Extragalactic Astronomy
- Cosmic Evolution
- Introduction to the Planets
- Observational astronomy
Level 2
Level 3
- Stellar Evolution
- High Energy Astrophysics
- Introduction to General Relativity
- Cosmology
- Galactic Astronomy
- The Interstellar Medium
- Binary and Variable Stars
- Galaxies Beyond the Milky Way
- Directed Readings in Current Literature
- Stellar Astrophysics
- Radiation in Planetary Atmospheres
- Astronomical Instrumentation and Techniques
- Clusters of Galaxies
- Astrophysical Dynamics
- Computational Methods
- Astrophysical Hydrodynamics
Active participants
The histories of Wikiversity pages indicate who the active participants are. If you are an active participant in this school, you can list your name here (this can help small schools grow and the participants communicate better; for large schools it is not needed).
Are you interested in Astronomy? Would you like to create instruction material and help out with people studying this topic? Sign up to be a participant by adding your username to this list!
School news
- August 17, 2006 - School founded!
Research projects
- Learning project: Astronomy Project - students access public astronomy databases and explore outer space.
- Astrophysics Source Code Library = ASCL
- BoomCode - GPL Type II supernova collapse code
Resources
Know any good resources for scholars of this topic? Add them here!
Wikiresources
External Resources
- Journal article database
- Preprints database
- Astrophysics source code library
- Dick McCray's Astronomy Hypertext
- Introduction to General Astronomy, Webcast from Berkeley
- Amateur Astronomy - wiki journal
Related news
- March 6, 2007 - New study produces mathematical rules of galaxy formation.
- February 21, 2007 - Astronomers are finally able to analyze the atmosphere of exoplanets