Stars

For information on specific stars and the constellations, go to a site of the Washburn Observatory, University of Wisconsin:

http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/constellations.html

Three of the images featured in our exhibit were taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Press releases from the Space Telescope Science Institute will give you more information.

Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in the constellation Orion:

http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/96/04.html

The Orion Nebula and the enlarged view of protoplanetary disks around three of its stars:

http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/94/24.html

For information on observing the night sky with the naked eye, binoculars, or telescopes, check out "Backyard Astronomy: Tips on Observing the Universe," a Web site of Sky & Telescope:

http://www.skypub.com/backyard/backyard.html#explore

Sun

For an excellent and more extensive introduction to the Sun than given in our exhibit, go to a site at the Los Alamos National Laboratory:

http://spaceart.com/solar/eng/homepage.htm

To learn about the Sun's outermost layers, the corona, go the Yohkoh Public Outreach Program, a NASA-funded Web site of the Lockheed-Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory:

http://www.lmsal.com/YPOP/

For up-to-date images of the Sun, the Sun's effect on the terrestrial space environment, and other Sun-related information, go to the homepage of the Space Environment Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

http://www.sel.noaa.gov

Hydrogen Fusion

For a clear, step-by-step description of the fusion of hydrogen into helium, go to the following Web pages:

Movies -- Department of Physics, University of Oregon (you need an mpeg viewer):

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/textbook/energygen.html

Units of Measurement

The relationships between the US customary units of measurement and the International System (metric) of units are described on many Web sites.

Two good ones are listed below. The first site, from the California Department of Transportation, is an introduction for those not very familiar with the subject. The second one, prepared by the Washington State Department of Transportation, goes right to the heart of the matter with an extensive listing of conversion factors:

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric/metdoc1.htm
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Metrics/factors.htm

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is charged by Executive Order 12770 of July 25, 1991, to help establish the metric system as the preferred system of weights and measures for US trade and commerce. NIST's Metric Program Web site provides a great deal of information on the metric system, its history in the US, its value to US commerce in global market competition, and more. For a readable introduction to the metric system go to the second reference:

http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/200/202/mpo_home.htm
http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/200/202/lc1186a.htm