As you may have guessed by the title, all of today’s links relate in one way or another to the sky. Whether it’s aviation or astronomy, all you have to do is look up.
SKYTRAX has been online since ’99, rating and reviewing both airlines and airports worldwide. They pride themselves in taking “no financial association or affiliation with any airline or airport featured”, so they’re like Consumer Reports in that sense. Of course, the idea is that you can trust their reviews, as no-one entity pays them for sweeter reviews. Additionally, they offer an “independent customer forum”, so it’s like comments on any other website—you can essentially read or write your own short blog posts concerning your impressions, experiences and opinions of airlines and airports.
The Aviation Education Multimedia Library is a pretty technical, academic site for the purpose of “the acquisition and dissemination of digital material for the aviation educator”. It has sections on “unmanned aircraft” (drones to you and me), airframe materials, powerplant materials and general materials. If you are wanting reliable, detailed information concerning these aviation issues, then this site will be helpful.
At Home Astronomy is a site that offers “hands on science experiments for the whole family”. The information comes from the UC Berkeley Center for Science Education at Space Sciences Laboratory (CSE@SSL), so you know that it is proctored, quality information. Essentially this site offers simple experiments to demonstrate principles such as how the sun casts shadows, how a rocket works and other similar issues concerning basic astronomy. They even encourage fair use, as in classrooms and other non-profit situations.
Yes, NASA is still a thing. This is a big site, so if you’re interested in flight and/or astronomy here are the best links:
- Solar System and Beyond has fascinating multimedia representations of planets, stars and other celestial bodies, as well as links to satellite feeds from the Hubble, Kepler and other famous space going satellites.
- Aeronautics is just what it says–everything about the science or practice of traveling through the air. It covers everything from Green Aviation and Future Spacecraft to something called the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (details about NASA research that directly benefits consumer Aeronautics such as commercial airliners and such).
If you are familiar with Neal deGrasse Tyson, you might know that he is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, which is a part of the American Museum of Natural History. Perhaps the most useful part of the site for research purposes is the Digital Universe, which boasts “…the most complete and accurate 3-D atlas of the Universe from the local solar neighborhood out to the edge of the observable Universe.”
For more information there is someone named Clark M. Thomas who has a pet site he calls the “Best of the Best” Astronomy links, which can be found here.