WWT Tour Ideas

(A handy list for people unfamiliar with WWT, feel free to add ideas that I've missed! -OJF)

Sky Motions

• Eclipses (Earth - moon - Sun, Jupiter - Io, Europa, G, C - Sun)

• Transits (of Venus and Mercury wrt to Earth, or or Earth wrt to Jupiter etc.)

• Planets in the Sky, Retrograde Motion

• Conjunctions and Alignments

Stellar Evolution and Astrophysical Processes

• Nebulae associated with Star Formation

• Supernova Remnants, including in x-ray

• Planetary Nebulae

  • Multiwavelength Universe. Each band tells a story: Radio, IR (dust), UV, X-ray are recommended

  • Sky tour of nearby stars in several evolutionary stages (Main seq, Red Giant, etc)

Galaxies (including our own)

• • The multi-wavelength sky

  • types of galaxies in the sky, structure and color differences

  • Milky Way Structure (hard with WWT??)

  • Satellite Galaxies of the Milky Way, Globular Clusters (only from sky view, not in the 3D view)

  • Clusters of Galaxies (from sky view you can see local clusters like Virgo and Coma, in 3D view you can see larger volume of the Universe and many unnamed clusters)

The Structure and History of the Universe

• Structure in the galaxies of the Sloan Volume

  • The WMAP sky as compared to the Sloan Volume

Solar System Formation

• Orbits of solar system objects (most aren't picture in WWT, but their orbits are)

  • Comets

  • Asteroids

  • Kuiper Belt Objects

  • Near Earth Objects

  • Terrestrial Planets vs. Gas Giants

  • Moons, inner solar system vs outer solar system compare crater sizes of moons etc.

Planetary Science

• Craters on different worlds

• Mountains/Geological features on different worlds

  • Volcanism

  • Poles/polar regions

  • Moon Landings

  • Robotic Exploration of the Solar System (Mars landers, Cassini, etc.)

Earth

• • Oceans

  • Monuments: Spiral Jetty, Nazca Lines,

  • Ancient Observatories (Stone Henge, other cultures?)

Objects Missing from WWT: "Tours to Avoid"

• • Moons of Mars, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto; minor moons of Jupiter

  • extra-solar planets (no imagery, stars are just points of light)

  • Oceans (except for Earth's)

  • Oort Cloud

  • Ring systems (except for Saturns, but realize that Saturn's rings are represented by a flat, painted annulus.

  • Center of the Milky Way (except in Sky View, where the view is multiwavelength, but the resolution is limited)

  • The local group of galaxies (except in Sky View, but would involve a lot of panning around the sky)

  • Types of stars (stars are just points of light) <-- phil disagrees types of stars are fine, 3d maps have accurate colors, as does sky view.