General Information (See also the star Classification resource page)

• Star Info: How Stars Work at howstuffworks.com; Jim Kaler's information page.
• Star Catalogs/Lists: The USNO catalog page, and its Precision Measuring Machine project; St Cloud State's list of bright stars by season.
• Star Names: The International Astronomical Union page; Jim Kaler's page.
• Research Groups: Nuclear astrophysics at UNC site.

Properties of Stars (See also the Clusters resource page for ages)

• Parallax: Cornell University java animation page; UBC java simulation page.
• Distances: Ned Wright's page at UCLA; UTK page.
• Magnitudes: Project Pluto page; Sky & Telescope article; UTK page.
• Radial Velocities: Spectrashift.com amateur redshift measurement site.
• Rotation: Caltech research group site.
• Sizes: space.com July 2001 article on new method.
• Oscillations/Astroseismology: Observational missions are Eddington, COROT, MONS, KEPLER.

Books

• R.H. Allen, Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, Dover reprint 1963.
• J.B. Kaler, Stars and Their Spectra, Cambridge University Press 1989.
• J.B. Kaler, The Little Book of Stars, Copernicus Books 2000.
• J.B. Kaler, Extreme Stars: At the Edge of Creation, Cambridge University Press 2001.
• A.W. Hirshfeld, Parallax: The Race to Measure the Cosmos, Freeman 2001.

More Technical References

• M.J.P.F.G. Monteiro et al, "Asteroseismic Inference for Solar-Type Stars," astro-ph/0110445.

Special Stars (See also C Kronberg's Asterism page, and the Constellation page here)

• Lists: Jim Kaler's site at U of Illinois; Chris Dolan's list of the 26 brightest stars.
• Aldebaran: University of Bologna page.
• Antares: A star within a nebula; image.
• Betelgeuse: NASA on angular size.
• Garnet star: A 15-AU diameter supergiant, 2700 ly away in Cepheus; Jim Kaler's page.
• Polaris: St Cloud State University page.
• V838 Mon: A mystery star, not quite a nova; ap021003.

Missions and Exploration

• Eddington: An ESA mission, whose key objectives are to understand the physical processes that govern the evolution of stars of different types and ages, and to search for and determine the characteristics of Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.
• FAME (Full-sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer): A USNO mission, with other institutions, that was to be launched in 2004 on a 2+1/2-year mission as a NASA MIDEX mission, using solar sails. As of January 2002, cancelled due to increased budget costs.
• GAIA: A catch-all ESA project, devised to give precise and detailed information about the billion brightest objects in the sky, whatever they may be; scheduled for launch around 2012.
• Hipparchos: ESA's astrometry mission, that operated in space from 1989 to 1993, measuring the positions, distances, motions, brightness and colors of stars; It pinpointed more than 100,000 stars, 200 times more accurately than ever before (resolution of 0.001 arcsec).
• MOST (Microvariability and Oscillation of Stars): A Canadian 15-cm space telescope (the smallest space telescope), launched in 2003 to measure the vibrations of Sun-like stars (stellar seismology), determine their age, and hunt for extrasolar planets.
• RAVE (RAdial Velocity Experiment): An all-sky stellar spectroscopy survey started in 2003 on the 1.2-m UK Schmidt telescope in eastern Australia; Its goal is to reconstruct our Galaxy's history by gathering key components of motion and chemical compositions for its apparently brightest 50 million stars; Will be able to measure velocities to within 2 km/s.
• RECONS (Research COnsortium on Nearby Stars): A project whose goal is to understand the nature of the Sun's nearest stellar neighbors, both individually and as a population, by discovering "missing'' members of the sample of stars within 10 parsecs (32.6 light years), and characterizing all stars within that distance limit.
• 2MASS (Two-Micron All-Sky Survey).
• SIM (Space Interferometry Mission): Launch planned for 2009.