Education Topics:

Programs

Activities

Resources

Contact Us

Black Holes: An Introductory Resource List

7. A Few Web Sites with Black Hole Information or Animations

Hubble Space Telescope Black Hole Encyclopedia (a good introduction for beginners):
http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/home.html

Frequently Asked Questions about Black Holes (written by University of Richmond physicists Ted Bunn in 1995, while he was a graduate student at Berkeley; a bit dated, but still good):
http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/BHfaq.html

The Universe in the Classroom (The ASP's Newsletter on Teaching Astronomy) Issue on Black Holes by John Percy:
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/24/24.html

Chandra X-Ray Observatory Field Guide to Black Holes:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/xray_sources/blackholes.html

StarDate's Introduction to Black Holes:
http://blackholes.stardate.org/

87 Questions and Answers about Black Holes from astronomer Sten Odenwald's Astronomy CafИ:
http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/abholes.html

Monsters in Galactic Nuclei (an article on supermassive black holes by John Kormendy and Gregory Shields from StarDate Magazine):
http://chandra.as.utexas.edu/~kormendy/stardate.html

Monster of the Milky Way (companion site to the PBS-TV NOVA episode on the black hole at the center of our Galaxy):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/

Black Hole Math (a nice introductory booklet at the high-school math level by astronomer Sten Odenwald):
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/topnav/materials/listbytype/Black_Hole_Math.html

Spacetime Wrinkles Website:
http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/NumRelHome.html
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications Relativity Group (whew -- what a name!) has set up an intriguing and well produced "exhibit on line" about Einstein's theory of relativity and its astronomical implications, including some movies in which they simulate situations such as the collision of two black holes.

The Light Cone:
http://physics.syr.edu/courses/modules/LIGHTCONE/
Rob Salgado of Syracuse University has produced a series of simulations that explain ideas in special and general relativity theory and provide a glossary and links.

Black Hole Animations: Using high-speed computers, several groups of physicists have simulated the behavior of black holes and what it might be like to fall into one. Among the sites with web-movies from such simulations are:

Virtual Trips into Black Holes and Neutron Stars (by Robert Nemiroff):
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/rjn_bht.html

Falling Into a Black Hole (animations by Andrew Hamilton):
http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/schw.shtml

back to table of contents

8. Black Holes for Educators

For a set of black hole information guides and demonstration activities from the ASP's and JPL's Night Sky Network, click on the link below and check the box on black holes:
http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/download-search.cfm

The Universe in the Classroom (The ASP's Newsletter on Teaching Astronomy) Issue on Black Holes by John Percy:
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/24/24.html

No Escape: The Truth about Black Holes (teacher lesson from the Space Telescope Science Institute):
http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/blackholes/teacher/index.html

Gravity and Black Holes (A Teacher Guide from the Adler Planetarium):
http://www.adlerplanetarium.org/education/resources/gravity/index.shtml

Black Hole Math (a nice introductory booklet at the high-school math level by astronomer Sten Odenwald):
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/topnav/materials/listbytype/Black_Hole_Math.html

The Anatomy of Black Holes (from NASA's Imagine the Universe site):
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/teachers/blackholes/imagine/contents.html

back to table of contents