A waxing gibbous Moon. Astronomy.com member "LATiger" photo I have a love-hate relationship with the Internet. It makes getting information easier than ever, but it also can make getting the CORRECT information more difficult than ever. Sometimes, it takes a lot of sifting through less-than-reputable sites to find goods ones you can trust. So it’s a bonus when someone else does it for you. The Astronomy Society of the Pacific has been working...

In its 14th issue, the Astronomy Education Review (AER), a web-based journal about astronomy education and outreach, introduced a new section dedicated to teaching astronomy through demonstrations . John Keller of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and Steve Pompea of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory organized a set of seven educator-submitted ideas for hands-on learning in the classroom. There are a mixture of models...

In August, we asked you if astronomy should be included in middle school or high school curriculums through our Astronomy.com Online Poll. The results overwhelmingly favored including astronomy as either a mandatory or an optional course. Well, even though many schools still don’t include astronomy as a mandatory course (or offer it at all), there are some great computer tools that now educate and let users participate in active research. In its 13th...

I have to commend Andrew Fraknoi and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific on a great new web resource that came across my desk yesterday. “Women in Astronomy: An Introductory Resource Guide to Materials in English” is an excellent index for astronomy and history enthusiasts who want to learn more about how the female gender has impacted our study of the universe. It contains print and web references for the general topic of women in astronomy,...

Many people — at least, many of the people science writers write for — read to satisfy a basic curiosity about the universe. How does the world work? What’s out there in the unfathomable great beyond of outer space? Astronomy readers, in particular, enjoy getting their minds bent around improbable ideas like black holes, multi-dimensional universes, and lakes on Titan filled with that stuff in your barbecue grill gas tank. But can writing about science...