The Astronomy 161-The Solar System online course is maintained by the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Tennessee. The twenty two chapters cover everything from time and scale in the universe, development of modern astronomy, the planets, asteroids, meteors, and everything in between. Text, photographs, illustrations, and movies, help users understand the topics along with a...

In 1996 it was Comet Hyakutake (discussed in the March 22, 1996 Scout Report). This year it's Comet Hale-Bopp. While there are many sites devoted to this comet, one of the best is provided by NASA. The main NASA site at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is highlighted, of course, by images (over 1,700 at present). It also contains over twenty-five animations (mostly MPEG and animated .gif files),...

Comets have fascinated humans for hundreds of years, and most recently with the idea of creating a "deep impact" upon a comet in order to study the interior composition and makeup of these bodies. With this scientific mission in mind, a team of researchers (including participants from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Maryland) will send an impactor spacecraft into the Comet...

NASA's Deep Impact mission will attempt to impact a comet nucleus in order to answer basic questions about the nature of comets. Deep Impact's preliminary design phase was completed and approved last week. NASA will now begin building the mission's two spacecraft, a flyby spacecraft and a 350-kilogram (771-pound) impactor spacecraft, for a launch in January 2004. This news brief on Deep Impact...

NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) offers this Webpage (for another similar page from JPL, see the March 13, 1998 Scout Report for Science & Engineering) containing relevant information on Near Earth Objects (NEO). The site includes current tables with tracking data for potentially hazardous asteroids and their approaches towards earth, detailed...

This site provides information related to the recently discovered asteroid 1997XF11. NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) is an observatory in Maui, Hawaii. The site provides images and information about newly discovered asteroids, comets, and other unusual objects.