SDSU Astronomy 310: Astrobiology
Astrobiology Web Sites

Astrobiology General Resources

Astrobiology Magazine an outstanding source of information for all things related to astrobiology.
NASA's Planet Quest and the "Alien Safari" interactive site.
NAI: The NASA Astrobiology Institute
Astrobiology at NASA
Astrobiology.com - The Astrobiology Web: Your Online Guide to the Living Universe
European Space Agency: Astrobiology
Australian Centre for Astrobiology
New Scientist Magazine Special Report on Astrobiology
BBC online Science/Space/Life?

Some Videos:

Infrared: More Than Your Eyes Can See from the Spitzer Space Telescope.
Infrared: More Than Your Eyes Can See from the Spitzer Space Telescope. [YouTube version]

Astrobio courses at other universities:

Search for Extraterrestrial Life, Univ. of Texas, Austin This site has a great collection of links to more information.
Scientific Search For Life course at UC Berkeley
Astrobiology curriculum from TERC: contains useful links & resources.

Extrasolar planets

Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia
Geneva Extrasolar Planet Search
Detecting Other Worlds: The Wobble Method
Links to Exoplanet-related sites maintained by S. Udry @ the Univ. of Geneva
University of California Planet Search Project
The Kepler Mission homepage and Kepler @ NASA; Using transits, this is NASA's first mission capable of finding Earth-size exoplanets.
SIM: Space Interferometry Mission - Planet Detection

Specific info on epsilon Eridani info from the Sol Company (solstation.com) for class homework. See also their site on notable nearby stars

Mars

Google Labs' Google Mars and a possible figure for an exam question.
NASA's Mars Exploration Program
Phoenix Mars Lander @ University of Arizona
Phoenix Mars Lander @ NASA
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Mars Exploration Rover Mission
Mars Express News
ESA's Mars Express
Send your name to Mars! (the program is now over, but the Astrobio class of Fall 2003 made it! And here's an image of the DVD on Mars!
The Lure of Hematite from Science@NASA
Life on Mars? A look at the Viking bio experiments. From the Malin Space Scicence Systems.
The Viking Mission to Mars, a comprehensive site hosted at NASA GSFC.
Viking: The Search for Life (brief notes from Astr161 class at U. Tennessee)
NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey Mission
GRS on Odyssey Info from the Gamma Ray Spectrometer Team at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory @ Univ. Arizona
Mars Pathfinder
Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) web site
The UK's Open University's Beagle2 web site
NASA Captures New Images of the Face on Mars
Mars Global Surveyor Face on Mars
Mars Global Surveyor Area of face on Mars
After 10 Years, Few Believe Life on Mars By Matt Crenson @ Space.com; also see Experts Say: Little Evidence of Life on Mars.
Skeptical of evidence for life on Mars meteorite from Spaceflight Now
Scientific American: From Mars to Earth in a Meteorite?
Scientific American: Bugs in the Data?
The famous ALH 84001 meteorite
Mars Meteorites from JPL. As of 2004, 34 meteotites from Mars have been found.
SNC Meteorites from Wolfram Research
"How Terraforming Mars Will Work" by K. Bonsor from HowStuffWorks.

Europa and Titan

Huygens News from ESA
The Cassini-Huygens Mission from JPL
Listen to Titan Sounds from the Huygens "Microphone" from the Planetary Society
Galileo Mission: Europa
American Scientist article on Europa
"Thin ice opens lead for life on Europa" from NewScientist.com
Europa has raw materials for life - but ice layer may be very thick from NewScientist.com
Cryobot passes arctic test from NewScientist.com
Lake Vostok an excellent article from Wired Magazine
Lake Vostok NSF Fact Sheet
Vital signs from Lake Vostok from NewScientist.com
Michael Studinger's Lake Vostok Homepage
Hydrocaron seas on Titan? "The Glitter of Distant Seas" from Science Express (originally in Science 302, 403; 2003 Oct 17) More on Titan's possible liquid hydrocarbon surfaces: "Titan's Oily Lake" from Astrobiology Magazine
Methane rain falls on Titan from NewScientist.com
"Titan weather: Methane downpours and drizzle" Titanic Moon: Prebiotic Chemistry from Saturnian Turn from Astrobiology Magazine


Some Related Biology sites

Astrobiology at the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
BIOL 100: General Biology by Dr. Lee McClenaghan @ SDSU
Kenneth Todar's Procaryotic Microbiology course at Univ. Wisconsin-Madison. Extensive info. Look under the heading "Readings".
Introduction to the Archaea from UC Berkeley; plus lots of useful links
The Bio-Web Resources for Molecular and Cell Biologists
Cell and Molecular Biology Online: online courses & textbooks
The Dynamic Cell Nucleus Lecture Series
Microbes.info - The Microbiology Information Portal.
Largest bacterial on earth (Science News, 1999 April)
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
WHOI In Motion: A Gallery of Animation and Video
WHOI Dive & Discover: Expeditions to the Seafloor
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla
Alfred Wegener Institute Foundation for Polar and Marine Research
Collapse of simple life forms & mass extinction by Dr. Peter Ward, Univ. Washington (co-author of "Rare Earth")

SETI

Very nice collection of info on SETI from the folks at "Sky & Telescope" Magazine
SETI at the University of California, Berkeley
SETI @ home
SETI Institute
BETA at Harvard
Discovery Release Protocol: What will SETI do if they find an ET Intelligence? "Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence"
Are We The Galaxy's Dumbest Civilization? From Seth Shostak, SETI Institute: "I get this question a lot, given the fact that "intelligence" is the last word of the SETI acronym. `Is there intelligence on Earth?' wags will ask (and by so doing, make their query relevant). What defines a species as intelligent, and how do SETI researchers decide?"
Gaining new respect - Are we alone? Scientists think they can find answer an AP news story presented about SETI by MSNBC.



This page was last updated on 2008 Jan 22.