Scavenger Hunt

Background

SkyServer's About Astronomy and About SDSS pages contain background material to help students and teachers understand the concepts in this project. In addition to SkyServer pages, the references below give more information about the topics covered in this project, and give information and perspectives that may be of interest.

Books

The first three books are college texts that require only limited knowledge of science and mathematics. They may be used to provide definitions of words found in the project in greater depth. The fourth book is at a lower reading level and may be used for the same purpose.

1. Comins, Neil F., Kaufmann, William J., Discovering the Universe, Sixth Edition. W.H. Freeman. New York, 2003. (ISBN 0-7167-9673-2)
2. Chaisson, Eric and McMillan, Steve, Astronomy Today, Fifth Edition. Prentice Hall. New Jersey, 2005. (ISBN 0-13-144596-0)
3. Fix, John D., Astronomy Journey to the Cosmic Frontier, Third Edition. McGraw-Hill, New York, 2004. (ISBN 0072482621)
4. The Nature Company Guide to Advanced Skywatching, Time-Life Books, 1997. (ISBN 0-7385-4941-5)

Web Sites

SkyServer: Famous Places shows images of the types of objects students seek in this project.

Sky Chart from Sky and Telescope magazine shows the appearance of the night sky from any place on Earth at any time.

Astronomy Basics, also from Sky and Telescope, explains basic terms, celestial coordinates, and other concepts from the point of view of an amateur astronomer.

Hubble Gallery gives a tour of the universe as seen through the Hubble Space Telescope and explains how the Hubble images are made and what the colors mean.

Star Date On-Line, produced by the University of Texas MacDonald Observatory, provides information, images, and links about stargazing and current events in astronomy.