On July 14, NASA announced the public release of a huge collection of images (1.9 million) from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), the most thorough census of stars ever made. Using two automated, 51-inch telescopes, one in Arizona and the other in Chile, the three-year-old survey has so far taken images of half a million galaxies and 162 million stars. By its completion, the survey's catalogs...

The Canada - France - Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) is a non-profit organization managing a 3.6 meter telescope located on the dormant Hawaiian volcano, Mauna Kea. Visitors can read HOKU: An Online Newsletter for Educators and Parents. Researchers can learn how to prepare proposals to submit to CFHT, prepare an observation run, and observe at CFHT. Visitors can discover the CFHT's many research projects...

The European Southern Observatory supplies the public with the latest news about the telescope and project in addition to background information and images.

A NASA mission expected to launch in 2006, the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is being developed to observe celestial gamma-ray sources in the 10MeV to over 100GeV energy band. After discovering its four key objectives, visitors can learn about GLAST's Precision Tracker Calorimeter, Data Acquisition System, and Anticoincidence Detector. Students and educators will find documentation...

This site is a companion to the travelling Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Smithsonian exhibition. Offerings include numerous brief, illustrated fact sheets on the telescope and the universe, movies, related links, and information on the travelling exhibit. This modest but well-crafted site offers a nice educational diversion for anyone interested in astronomy.

This feature from the Exploratorium Museum (last mentioned in the May 30, 2000 Scout Report) offers a nice, compact overview of the Hubble Space telescope and what we have learned from its observations. Aimed at a general audience, the site's contents include a tour of Hubble, a gallery of images and information on how these are produced, and an introduction to the people behind Hubble, among...

The interactive and graphically stunning HubbleSite is produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute's Office of Public Outreach and covers all aspects of the Hubbel Telescope for the general public. The Striking Encounters multimedia activity shows how galaxies collide and how scientists study them using the telescope. Other features include a photo gallery, descriptions of discoveries that...

This week's In the News highlights the recent finding of distant galaxies by the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists recently activated the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) aboard the Hubble Telescope to peer into formerly unseen areas of the universe. What they saw were the "faintest galaxies ever seen." The distance to these galaxies cannot be confirmed until the year...

The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NOW), and the Instituto de Astrof'sica de Canarias (IAC) operate the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING), consisting of the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope, the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope, and the 1.0 m Jacobus Kapetyn Telescope. Astronomers can find out about the...

The 305m radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory "is the largest single-dish radio telescope on our planet and is available to the global scientific community for astronomical observation at wavelengths between 6 m and 3 m." Researchers can search WAPP data and information about past, present, and future projects at the Observatory. The extensive website provides numerous data reduction...