Professional Astronomy Articles and Journals


Professional Astronomy Articles

While the internet is a great source of information on just about any topic, not all websites are reliable. As an SAO student, you will be expected to do more than just a Google search of the web when researching your essay and project topics. It might seen a little daunting when you first join SAO, but you will need to start reading some professional astronomy articles. Professional journal articles have been peer-reviewed and so they (generally!) have more credibility that some generic astronomy website. (That said, there are of course many reliable astronomy websites, especially if they are hosted by professional organisations, like NASA and professional observatories and universities.)

The quickest way to search for journal articles is via the ADS abstract server, which gives direct links to articles in the major professional astronomy and astrophysics journals. To ensure that you can access as many papers as possible, SAO students can access ADS via a Swinburne library ezproxy (which requires your Swinburne login and SIMS password). Follow this link to the ADS abstract server (full URL: http://ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/login?url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/). For a tutorial on how to use the ADS abstract server, see the SAO presentation on Online Articles and Preprint Databases.

Astronomers often add their articles to the online astrophysics preprint servers astro-ph. This archive includes article in-press (meaning they have been accepted for publication in a professional journal), as well as article submitted to journal (but not yet accepted) and articles that are thought to be of interest to the community. This is where you can get the very latest astronomy news before it goes to print!

Professional Astronomy Journals

As mentioned above, the quickest was to search for journal articles is via the ADS abstract server. This gives you access to the major astronomy journals:

  • Annual Reviews of Astronomy & Astrophysics
  • The Astrophysical Journal
  • The Astronomical Journal
  • Astronomy & Astrophysics
  • Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

The general science journals Nature and Science also contain astronomy articles.

For information about accessing articles in these and other journals, see the library information page.

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