Curated by John Schmit

Friday, November 30, 2012

XCOR Aerospace

http://xcor.com/index.html

XCOR Aerospace is a private company endeavoring to make space flight affordable for private citizens. It is a leader in the commercial space transportation industry. The company's website proudly posts its latest achievements and growth. They are hiring! You'll find tabs to information about the company, its products, news items, images and a contact information page. It's interesting to follow the activities of private space operations as we move forward in space. Don't forget to purchase your Lynx Suborbital ticket while you're at the site. XCOR encourages use of their "low volume" mailing list to keep up with the latest news. You can also follow XCOR on Twitter and Facebook.

Monday, November 26, 2012

The Space Review

http://www.thespacereview.com/index.html

The Space Review provides "essays and commentary about the final frontier". The website explores all aspects of space exploration with its articles and reviews. You won't find the latest hot news item here, but what you do find is analytical and thought provoking. Editor Jeff Foust hopes to provide you with the big picture of a spacefaring civilization. Items are place in the center of the screen, with the latest on top. Scrolling down takes you to earlier items and to the archive. The archive goes back to December of 2003. The site is ad supported. You can subscribe for new articles alerts or follow on Twitter. You are also invited to submit articles to the Review.

Friday, November 23, 2012

The Solar Terrestrial Dispatch

http://spacew.com/

The Solar Terrestrial Dispatch is a private space weather service company founded in 1989. They provide real-time data dissemination that includes auroral watches, warnings, solar wind information and more. The websites main page has real-time solar activity presented in graphs and images. Clicking on either presents additional data that is updated every few minutes. The left side of the main page provides links to a variety of products, software, forecasts, Summaries and other services. There is an excellent online course to help you more fully understand space weather and its related terrestrial impacts. Also available are latest sightings, watches, solar images and High Frequency radio information. Be sure to check the Recent Gallery Submissions and the Latest Aurora Observation Reports.

Friday, November 16, 2012

The Daily Galaxy

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/

The Daily Galaxy is a web blog started in 2007 by Val Landi that's focused on space news and items of interest. It is now led by editor Casey Kazan who has a team of web architects and editors who bring the images and videos to life. The Galaxy Media, LLC website is advertiser based and they appear on the right of the screen. An occasional popup is easy to close. The news items are well presented in visual and story format. Stories are presented in a column, with the latest on top. An image and short description give you a summary of the item. Following is a link to "Continue reading" if you'd like to see the rest of the story. The rest of the story is presented on its own page along with an opportunity to comment at the bottom of the page. Each story has hot links embedded on key items for further information. Your 'back' key will take you back to the home page. Below the advertising on the right (you may scroll down a bit) you'll find access to the Archives and a link to more info about The Daily Galaxy. They are proud of their followers and you can be one of them on all the major social networks.

Monday, November 12, 2012

The Universe In Color

http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/

The Universe In Color is a compilation of the Astrophotography by Robert Gendler. There are hundreds of images in the Gallery. Separated into groups of Galaxies, Nebulae, Recent Images and Favorites, Hubble Images, Star Clusters and Terrestrial Images, you see the amazing work by Robert Gendler. The website also includes Essays on 140 popular astronomical objects, A Short Primer on Basic Astronomy, links to books Mosaics and personal related information. There is an excellent biography detailing Mr. Gendler's interest in astrophotography. He has written several illustrated books on the subject. The site provides well written information on how you can also take interesting, colorful images of the stars.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

theSkyNet

http://www.theskynet.org/

theSkyNet is a community computing organization put together for processing radio telescope data. It is organized by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, based in Perth, Western Australia. The organization uses Nereus, an Open Source Desktop Cloud Computing software registered on SourseForge.net on March 11, 2010. Data is sent to your computer in small packets and once there processed and sent back. All processing and data transfer is Java based and the background process does not access you hard drive at all. You can join theSkyNet and earn credits, trophies and even a grand prize. You can process data without joining and complete packets while connected with your web browser. The website provides easy sign up and software download access. If you join, be sure to note your account ID, as you will need that when setting up the software on your computer. Easy to do and you can contribute today!