Open Courses & Labs
- A mashup of OER for an Astronomy course
- Online Labs for Introductory Level Astronomy
“The Nebraska Astronomy Applet Project provides online laboratories targeting the undergraduate introductory astronomy audience. Each lab consists of background materials and one or more simulators that students use as they work through a student guide. Pretests and posttests can be used to gauge student learning.” - Open course by Gregory Pijanowski designed for a community college.
Freely Accessible Planetariums
- Google Sky
Planetarium with links to other Astronomy resources. - Neave Planetarium
An interactive sky map. Requires Adobe Flash Player. - Sky Gazer
“View the sky from any place on Earth or in the Solar System, over a timespan of ten thousand years from the present.” Includes sky chart, realistic planet graphs, eclipses, historic sky simulations, phases of the moon, and paths of the poles and planets. - Stellarium
“Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.”
Additional OER & Zero-Cost Resources
- Astronomy Resources from Saylor
- Galaxy Zoo
Crowd-sourced astronomy research. - Merlot Astronomy Materials
- PHet Astronomy Simulations
“PhET provides fun, free, interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations. We extensively test and evaluate each simulation to ensure educational effectiveness. These tests include student interviews and observation of simulation use in classrooms. The simulations are written in Java, Flash or HTML5, and can be run online or downloaded to your computer.”
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
