The sky in your computer

Justification (or why these pages became)

This Web site is a work of the V Course of University Expert in Internet and its applications, organized by the UNED academic course 2000-2001. But also there is interesting similarity to us to relate which was the genesis of these pages and what it caused them.

Several years ago I knew a group of teachers who dedicated themselves to the education of Astronomy in the province of Malaga (Spain). There was a Seminary, dependent of the Teachers Centre of Malaga, dedicated to the search of resources and the elaboration of materials to teach Astronomy in the old Bachillerato in the beginning; later, with the arrival of Reforma Educativa (L.O.G.S.E.), it appeared already in the official curriculum of the Obligatory Secondary Education (E.S.O.) a called subject Taller de Astronomía, that it tried to diversify the educative supply of the training centers and to approach the students this scientific discipline so near the reality in which they live, and that finally was eliminated in the Community of Andalusia by an Order of February of 2000 against that we have elsewhere protested without to have obtained fruit until the moment. Through those same dates the Permanent Seminary of Astronomy of Malaga almost happened to denominate Workgroup Astronomy in Education.

With the passage of the years, a group of teachers of different Communities, who had been many years dedicated to Astronomy from the didactic point of view, decided to organize themselves in the Association for the Astronomy Education (ApEA). One of its main activities is organization, each two years, of Encounter for Astronomy Education, in that it tries to put in common and to share the different experiences that each teacher carries out in his center, as well as to introduce to other teachers in the education of this science. Four meetings of this type in Cáceres (1995), Pamplona (1997), Granada (1999) and Murcia (2001) have already taken place, and Encounter in Zaragoza in June of 2003 are already predicted.

It was right before 3º Encounter, when a personal friend and member of the Association for the Astronomy Education, Luis Pérez Bernal, called to me by telephone and, knowing my interest in Astronomy and Computer science, he requested to me that I prepared a small document with some Internet addresses related to Astronomy. It is truth that is almost impossible to compile in a few pages all the information that exists in Internet on Astronomy, and much less to make a small relation of directions, that can give the impression that there is very little in Internet on the subject. Before my immoderation, I decided to limit the subject, so that more and more the information could be exposed in a brief work that can be found in Internet on programs and resources of Astronomy; but still I limited more: not to sin of imprudent, I have tried to compile only accessible programs from Internet, that is to say, this is going to outside leave the programs commercial that by their extension usually appear in CD-ROM. And to make justice to the self-sacrificing work of the programmers who offer their time, effort and work in form of gratuitous programs (freeware), I have given preference these before which they offer versions of evaluation of his programs limited in the time (shareware).

On the other hand, with the intention of which this work was useful to the greater number of people and so that no user of computers could feel excluded, there is very advisable similarity to me not to include only programs that worked under operating systems MSDOS and Windows, but that also I have reserved a space for the users of Mac systems, of BeOS, of portable devices or of that people who use the Linux operating system.

It is to make notice that most of the information is exposed in English and that exists a few programs in Spanish. Nevertheless, we try to offer information in our language on all the programs, as well as to provide the links so that the interested users can access directly to the pages in which they can download them.

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  Copyright © 2003 Javier Sánchez Quirós