Born of the extraordinary accomplishments of 20th century physics, astronomy, geology, and biology, the Origins program takes up the challenge of answering questions as old as our species. When Galileo first turned his tiny telescope to the night sky, he saw the Milky Way resolved into millions of stars, in one stroke expanding our grasp of the universe to a scale that had not been imagined from the sight of eyes alone. The growth of scientific culture and tools over the next three centuries revealed a vast realm, each at-first-incomprehensible discovery assimilated into an increasingly uncomfortable reality. The eruptive growth of 20th century astronomy has brought us an appreciation of how vast, old, and unearthly the universe is, and has left humanity struggling for a sense of our own significance consistent with the reality of who and what we are. But science has also given us something that will help, by promising answers to our ancient questions: Where did we come from? Are we alone? When the answers to these questions are known, our civilizations will evolve new visions of who we are and what our futures might be. Already we have learned enough to appreciate that the universe is enormous and ancient, but lifetiny and transientis its precious jewel.

Radio astronomy surveys using National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) telescopes. Proposals for telescope time. NRAO software resources. Radio frequency interference. Travel support for non-NRAO employees. Weather and other information.

On October 15, 1997, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, loaded with an array of powerful instruments, rocketed into space on a seven-year journey to Saturn and its vicinity. On July 1, 2004 Universal Time (June 30 in U.S. time zones), the spacecraft began orbiting Saturn for four years, flying close to several of its thirty-plus moons. The Huygens probe will separate from Cassini in December 2004, dive down through the thick, cloudy atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and land on Titan's surface in January 2005. Scientists expect that this extended tour of the Saturnian region will provide new information about the planets composition and atmosphere and its mysterious moons and rings. They also hope to learn more about the formation of the solar system. On this Web site (which will expand in winter 2004), we'll explore Saturn and its environs, adding new images and information as they become available.

SkyView is a Virtual Observatory on the Net generating images of any part of the sky at wavelengths in all regimes from Radio to Gamma-Ray.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the most ambitious astronomical survey project ever undertaken, will bring the modern practice of comprehensive and quantitative mapping to cosmography, the science of mapping the universe and determining our place in it. The Sky Survey will systematically map one-quarter of the entire sky, producing a detailed image of it and determining the positions and absolute brightnesses of more than 100 million celestial objects. It will also measure the distance to a million of the nearest galaxies, giving us a three-dimensional picture of the universe through a volume one hundred times larger than that explored to date. The Sky Survey will also record the distances to 100,000 quasars, the most distant objects known, giving us an unprecedented hint at the distribution of matter to the edge of the visible universe.

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) is a "research institute" of the Smithsonian Institution headquartered in Cambridge, MA, where it is joined with the Harvard College Observatory (HCO) to form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). More than 300 scientists at the CfA are engaged in a broad program of research in astronomy, astrophysics, earth and space sciences, and science education. Because many of these research activities share Harvard and Smithsonian staff and resources, several of the "SAO" links at this website will take you to information posted on joint "CfA" pages.

The Space Environment Center (SEC) is one of the nine National Centers for Environmental Prediction and provides real-time monitoring and forecasting of solar and geophysical events, conducts research in solar-terrestrial physics, and develops techniques for forecasting solar and geophysical disturbances. The SEC Forecast Center is jointly operated by NOAA and the U.S. Air Force and is the national and world warning center for disturbances that can affect people and equipment working in the space environment.

The Space Environment Center (SEC) provides real-time monitoring and forecasting of solar and geophysical events, conducts research in solar-terrestrial physics, and develops techniques for forecasting solar and geophysical disturbances. SEC's Space Weather Operations Center is jointly operated by NOAA and the U.S. Air Force and is the national and world warning center for disturbances that can affect people and equipment working in the space environment.

Located on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, just above the Lawrence Hall of Science and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, the Silver Space Sciences Laboratory was built by NASA in 1966 to conduct basic space research in a variety of fields. SPRG conducts experimental research in space plasma physics on a variety of different spacecraft covering the earth's magnetosphere, auroral zone, tail region, the interplanetary solar wind, and in the near-space environments of other planets. Our emphasis is generally on the detailed, high time and spatial resolution measurements of the microphysics that governs the behavior of the larger scale processes occurring in these planetary, interplanetary, and presumably most other astrophysical plasmas. To accomplish this aim we conceive, design, and build state-of-the-art plasma particle detectors and electric field sensors to make in situ measurements of fields and particle distributions in various space plasmas. From these measurements we can study particle acceleration, plasma waves, wave-particle interactions, currents, various types of shocks and boundaries between different plasma environments, and other phenomena of interest to both basic plasma physics and general space physics. Instruments are flown on small NASA sounding rockets to study particle acceleration and wave-particle interactions in the Earth's northern auroral zone, while a multitude of satellite missions currently underway or in construction carry our instruments to more distant space plasmas surrounding the earth or in other regions of the solar system.

Astronomical research center responsible for operating the Hubble Space Telescope as an international observatory.

The Space Weather Now page is intended to give the non-technical user a plain language look at space weather. After the page is loaded it refreshes every 5 minutes.

Steward Observatory was officially established in 1916 through the foresight and perseverance of its first director, Andrew Ellicott Douglass, and a generous bequest made by Mrs. Lavinia Steward in memory of her late husband, Henry B. Steward. Astronomers here are among the national and international leaders in observational and theoretical research in astronomy. At the same time, they are making breakthroughs in related technology development -- from new light detectors to giant telescope mirrors -- that promise to be a catalyst for a renaissance in optical and infrared astronomy.

Understanding the sun, heliosphere, and planetary environments as a single connected system is the goal of the Sun-Earth Connection (SEC) Division. By analyzing the connections between the Sun, solar wind, planetary space environments, and our place in the Galaxy, we are uncovering the fundamental physical processes that occur throughout the Universe. Understanding the connections between the Sun and its planets will allow us to predict the impacts of solar variability on humans, technological systems, and even the presence of life itself.

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Supernova Program aims primarily at measuring the equation of state of Dark Energy. It is designed to precisely measure several hundred high-redshift supernovae.

The Lyot Project, involving scientists from around the United States with varied backgrounds, is an attempt to build an instrument that can remove more of the starlight from images of nearby solar systems than has ever before been possible. We intend to map regions comparable to the size of our own solar system around the nearest and brightest stars. Our work will also help to understand and break the barrier that has prevented the direct imaging of planets in orbit about other stars. We also hope to see nascent planetary systems, which may reveal precious clues about how planets and solar systems form.