p. 804 The Sun and Other Stars
The
Sun
Visit this site for a tour of the Sun. It has spectacular images
and simulations of solar flares, sunspots, magnetic fields, and solar
eclipses. The site explains the science of the Sun and the influence
it has on the solar system. Scroll down and click on Continue to begin
your tour.
How
the Sun Works
At this site you can find out more about how the Sun works.
Read the text as you scroll down. Click on Next Page when you are ready
to continue. What are the three major surface areas of the Sun?
Solar
Max 2000: What is Solar Max?
At this site you can find out about solar minimums and maximums—the
lowest and highest points in a cycle of solar activity. A cycle of solar
activity lasts about 11 years. The year 2000 was the solar maximum for
the current solar cycle. Explore this site to learn about sunspots,
solar flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). How do CMEs affect
Earth?
Windows
to the Universe
Visit this site by the University Corporation for Atmospheric
Research (UCAR) to learn more about the Sun, our solar system, and the
universe. You can enter the site in a variety of ways, and view pages
there from three different ability levels. Click on Enter the Site,
then on Headline Universe. Then choose an ability level and click on
it to see the options for information available there.
p. 810 The Sun and Other Stars
Current
Solar Images
Go to this National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
site to see the latest images of the Sun. Here you can find the most
recent, full-resolution solar images of each type available, such as
extreme ultraviolet images, soft x-ray images, and photospheric magnetograms.
Click on any image to enlarge it.
Milky-Way.com
At this site you can learn about the life, and the death, of
stars. Scroll down to learn about the stages in the lives of stars,
from the inter-stellar medium to the mature star and beyond. In the
life cycle of a star, what is a super nova?
Stellar Evolution and Death
Visit this NASA site to learn more about the life cycles of stars. Scroll
down and click on contents, then click on why and how stars evolve.
Why do stars eventually die?
The
Life and Death of Stars
Go to this NASA site to find out where stars are born. You can
find out the difference between a protostar and a main sequence star
here. Scroll down and read about stars. Is our Sun an ordinary star
or a massive star?
p. 828 The Chandra Observatory
Chandra:
The Man Behind the Name
Visit this site to find out more about Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar,
the astrophysicist for whom the Chandra X-Ray Observatory was named.
Chandra was born in India, but joined the faculty of the University
of Chicago in 1937. Early in his career he demonstrated that there is
an upper limit to the mass of a white dwarf star. What is this limit
called today?
Tracking
Chandra
Go to this site to learn more about the Chandra Observatory.
You can scroll down and click on the address for a tracking tutorial
if you have a browser that supports java. The tutorial shows you what
Chandra’s orbit looks like. Or you can click on the image of Chandra’s
orbit to see a variety of images that track Chandra in orbit.
