An excellent astronomy resource list is compiled by the AstroWeb Consortium. This consortium consists of 7 institutions around the world that share astronomical Web information. The institutions host Web sites that have slightly different presentation styles but the information is derived from a single master database that is updated every 24 hours. AstroWeb is probably the best starting point for astronomical Web searches. The URLs for AstroWeb are:
NRAO - U.S.A. www.cv.nrao.edu/fits/www/astronomy.html
STScI - U.S.A. www.stsci.edu/science/net-resources.html
(The STScI site sorted by category) www.stsci.edu/astroweb/astroweb-categories.html
CDS - France cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/astroweb.html
Villafranca - Spain www.vilspa.esa.es/astroweb/astronomy.html
La Plata - Argentina webhead.com/WWWVL/Astronomy/
MSSSO - Australia msowww.anu.edu.au/~anton/astroweb/
Cambridge, IoA - U.K. www.ast.cam.ac.uk/astroweb/yp_astronomy.html
The resources at NRAO are subdivided into Observing, Data, Publication related, People related, Organisations, Software, Research, Lists of resources, Imagery and Miscellaneous categories. The main site at STScI is sorted by protocol, the rest are sorted by category. The AstroWeb sites can be thought of as "mirror sites" in which the same information is stored on different sites.
Choosing a mirror site closer to your physical location can speed up connection and data transfer times.
AstroWeb tests its listed URLs each day to verify their aliveness. The URLs that exist in AstroWeb are submitted by site owners or managers, and are listed under categories suggested by them. Some URLs will be listed in more than one category.
The commercial service, YAHOO, also provides an astronomy resource list.
YAHOO-Astronomy www.yahoo.com/Science/Astronomy/
The Star*sFamily (Heck 1997) provides searchable lists of organisations and institutions (StarWorlds), Web pages (StarHeads) and a dictionary of abbreviations, acronyms and symbols (StarBits).
Star*sFamily cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/~heck/spages.htm
StarWorlds cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/~heck/sfworlds.htm
StarHeads cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/~heck/sfheads.htm
StarBits cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/~heck/sfbits.htm
WebStars is a list of astronomical resource sites created by the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archives Research Center (HEASARC).
WebStars heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/www_info/webstars.html
Some astronomy URLs of interest may not be in the above listings. The next section, Search Engines, will discuss how to find these.
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Last updated: 30-June-2000