Resources

Astronomy Websites

Here are a number of links to interesting astronomy websites as well as some tools and programs used by astrophotographers.

Night Sky Network!
Get it all here… the clubs in your area, night sky planner, moon phase, and outreach resources

The Weather Channel
Check out the current weather conditions for the Phoenix area

Arizona State Parks – Star Parties & Astro Events
Astronomy events right here in our own Arizona state parks

NASA New Horizon Mission
This exciting mission launched in January 2006 and is enroute to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. It is the fastest spacecraft and arrived at Pluto in July 2015 where it flies by this mysterious, frozen world and its moon Charon. The mission has already discovered two new moons around Pluto and many more discoveries are in store.

International Dark Sky Association
The International Dark-Sky Association is the only non-profit organization fighting to preserve the night, working to protect wildlife, cut energy waste, and stop light pollution.

Astronomy Games
Astronomy: Computer Software games for kids

Moon Calendar
Moon rise, Moon Set and Moon Phases Calendar

Light Pollution Map
A color coded interactive map of light pollution around the world with Bortle scale and more.

Stellarium
A free and open source planetarium for your PC that has just about everything you could ever need to find a wide swath of deep space objects and so much more.

PolarFinder
A free PC based polar alignment tool used for aligning your equatorial mounts with alignment scopes.

NightSkyGazing

This website helps people to get into amateur astronomy. It describes easy targets for observations, explains telescope types and characteristics, and helps to make first steps in astrophotography.

Kalamazoo Astronomical Society: Introduction to Amateur Astronomy lecture series

Part 1 Video: Our Place Amount the Infinities

Notes document in PDF format

Part 2 Video: Discovering the Night Sky

Notes document in PDF format

Part 3 Video: Binocular Basics

Notes document in PDF format

Part 4 Video: Telescope Tutorial

Notes document in PDF format

Part 5 Video: The Art of Astrophotography

Notes document in PDF format

Observatories

Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/flwo

Lowell Observatory: https://lowell.edu/

The Large Binocular Telescope Observatory: http://www.lbto.org/

Kitt Peak National Observatory: https://visitkittpeak.org/

Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter Observatory: https://skycenter.arizona.edu/

Butterfield RV Resort Observatory: https://www.rv-resort.com/

Astro-Photography:

APT (Astro Photography Tool) An optional camera control program for astrophotography compatible with a large number of cameras.

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.

A Beginner’s Guide to Choosing Equipment for Deep-Sky Electronically-Assisted Astronomy (EAA) Call it what you will, electronically-assisted astronomy is becoming a popular pastime for several reasons.

ASCOM Controllers A open source software required by many other softwares to connect and control electronic scopes and mounts.

Deep Sky Stacker Free Astrophotography software with manual and tutorials

PHD2 (Push Here Dummy 2) A free and open source powerful telescope guiding program used with guiding scopes for astrophotography.

Backyard EOS/Nikon A paid and powerful tool for all you DSLR astrophotographers looking to control your DSLR with ease.

NINA Astrophotography Tool (Free) Nighttime Imaging ‘N’ Astronomy (NINA) is a free tool that provides astrophotographers the tools to choose targets, control image framing, focusing, centering and control equipment. The tool is open source and in active development to improve capabilities. See the NINA home page for full details.