Many of you no doubt watched NBC's two-part movie Asteroid last month. While it was an interesting movie, if you think the astronomy in it was realistic, though, you're in for a surprise. This site, by astronomer Phil Plait, details the numerous, often terrible, inaccuracies in the movie, from the physical impossibilities of asteroids reaching Earth as they do in the movie to the unlikelihood of a 29-year-old running a national observatory. Not to mention destroying a four-mile-wide asteroid with a pair of lasers mounted on jet fighters! There are also links to sites on the Web with information about the real threat asteroids pose to the Earth. This page is part of a larger "Bad Astronomy" site which debunks some of the "urban legends" of astronomy.

http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~pcp2g/bad/asteroid.html

If there's a more comprehensive history of space flight on the Web, we haven't found it yet. This is a detailed reference source for the history of space flight, from 1930 to the present. You can examine the encyclopedia chronologically, or by mission or astronaut/cosmonaut. There aren't a lot of images but the vast array of information stored here more than makes up for this. This is a resource you'll definitely want to add to your bookmarks!

http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~mwade/spaceflt.htm

This site is an excellent resource for information about the Apollo Moon landings. The highlight is the collection of annotated transcripts from the missions, so you can read what the astronauts said during each mission (and really understand what's going on, thanks to the annotations.) There's also a lot more background information and features about each mission. A great place to go to relive (or live, if you're young enough) the missions.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/

There's a misconception that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) requires large radio telescopes and multimillion dollar funding. While these resources are certainly useful, the SETI League is trying to show that amateurs, using small homebuilt radio dishes, can also participate. Their Web site has information about Project Argus, a plan to deploy 5,000 small radio telescopes for an all-sky SETI project, as well as more information about the organization and SETI in general.

http://www.setileague.org/