I have upgraded all of the tools in the Orbital Integrators section of the Astronomy Workshop, making significant improvements in speed, functionality, stability, and overall appearance. Try the newest tool: The Lagrange Point Explorer.

The Astronomy Workshop was offline from Tue Apr. 22 at 14:00 until Wed Apr. 23 at 12:45 for restructuring of the server. This is the first outage in 1.5 years and should not be required again. Sorry for any inconvenience!

Which Astronomy Workshop tools are most popular? Find out with improved statistics available from the What's Hot link on the main page (updated daily). See the most popular tools from [2004] [2005] [2006] [2007] [2008] and [2009] - there are some surprises!

Now that the Scientific Notation application has served several million problems, I was able to notice and fix two very rare bugs that affected only about 1 in 10,000 questions. The affected problems included some that had very large numerical answers and the rare expressions that evaluated to zero. I also modernized the front page and added a big green GO button!

Curran Muhlberger and I have just finished a major upgrade of the popular Scientific Notation application. Users can now practice multiplication/division and addition/subtraction as well as conversion problems. There is also a new quiz feature. Enjoy!

The UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) is installed! The Astronomy Workshop can now survive 30 minute power failures. Hopefully this will be the last word on that subject.

The Astronomy Workshop's server went down again, and failed to reboot, due to another short power outage! This time the server was offline from Saturday morning at 8:00am through Monday at 12:50pm. We'll get that UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) this week.

The Astronomy Workshop's server went down Sunday morning due to a power glitch and was returned to service late Monday morning. Sorry for any inconvenience! We'll be investing in a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) soon. Also, thanks to Steve Vogt who informed me that the Rogue Star application was not working. It was repaired on Oct. 5.

The Astronomy Workshop's new server is online! Apologies to those of you who experienced downtime early this afternoon and for about an hour yesterday. Each CPU in the new server is 1.5 times faster than before and there are four of them, twice as many as before. In addition, transfer rates to and from the network are now at 1 Gbit instead of 100Mbit. These improvements should benefit all users, especially during time of high usage. Enjoy!

Andrew Lund has just released Star Race which we have posted in the Solar System Viewers section. The program animates the life of two stars born at the same time - which burns through it fuel fastest and what will they become in the end?

Noam Reisner has updated the "Did You Know ..." feature that appears on the main Astronomy Workshop page. He has added a number of new questions, produced locally-supported descriptions and images, and updated all external links. Noam and I will continue to add new content over the summer.

Michael VanDaniker has just released our first version of the Solar Systems Visualizer, posted in the Solar System Viewers section. The program animates the orbits i) the planets and minor bodies (asteroids and comets) in our Solar System, ii) planetary satellites and rings, and iii) extrasolar planets all in a single application. A smooth zoom feature gives the user a sense of scale, and toggle buttons allows the view to be customized. Additional comets, asteroids, and Kuiper belt objects will be added soon and we eventually plan to take this application into 3D. Try it out!

Kaveh Pahlevan has written a very nice application to translate between position and velocity components and orbital elements for both elliptical and hyperbolic orbits. Try it out: Changing the Elements in the Working with Orbits section. I've also made several upgrades to the Central Force Integrator, including improving the sampling rate near the origin so that orbital curves appear smooth and continuous.

Yesterday, we experienced a catastrophic loss of the hard disk holding the Astronomy Workshop. As a result, the site was down for 22 hours (from 1:24pm Thursday through 11:24am today) while a new hard disk was installed, and a copy of the contents of the disk was restored from backup. Most Astronomy Workshop functionality has been restored, although there may still be some minor glitches to repair. Sorry for any inconvenience!

Grace Deming has added useful Instructor Support and Student Activity pages for the Solar System Collisions page as links from the front page. We will be adding support for additional Astronomy Workshop tools in the future.

Kristofer Quinn has done an impressive job upgrading the Rogue Star application. The application is now fully 3D with slider bars that allow the scale and viewing orientation to be changed while the animation is running. In addition, click on the name of any object to center it in the screen. Enjoy!

I've added counters to the Scientific Notation and Working With Equations sites so that students can keep track of the number of problems that they answer right and wrong. Check it out! Also, a power outages caused the AW server to be offline Friday night through Saturday afternoon.

Rogue Star improvements are here courtesy of William Jacobson! Adjust the animation speed and toggle between the Sun and Rogue Star perspectives. Also, check out improvements to Solar System Collisions and Build Your Own Solar System.

A new tool written by Armen Galustyan, Earth's Seasons, is now available under Explore the Possibilities. Find out how our planet's tilt affects the amount of sunlight reaching different places at different times of the year.

The main Astronomy Workshop Page is now updated continually with a new Featured Tool and Astro Fact every day. There is also a new What's Hot link on the main page which is updated daily. Follow it to see which Astronomy Workshop tools others find most useful.

We have done a rare internal reorganization of the Workshop to facilitate future upgrades. If you have linked to individual tools or pages within the Astronomy Workshop, check your links! Some of them will need to be updated! Links to these popular tools:
Solar System Collisions
Astronomical Distances,
Scientific Notation
and a number of others should be changed. Sorry for any inconvenience.

The Life of the Sun is now permanently installed under Solar System Viewers .
Also Rogue Star now has an Animate OFF option for impatient users! You can also download the integration software HNBody for your own use.

MESSAGE #18. Tue Mar 09 11:51:17 2004. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

Today Leila Malayeri's Life of the Sun animation debuts on the Astronomy Workshop!

Also William Jacobson and I have completed the first of many planned improvements to Rogue Star. This version has i) Cleaner graphics, ii) Better handling of massive Rogue Stars, and iii) 15% faster download time for dialup modem users. Watch for further improvements!

MESSAGE #17. Sat Jan 31 11:21:03 2004. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

Another 24 hour server outage - Sorry! It is the dead of winter with subzero temperatures outside, but Janus overheated and shut itself off. We've replaced a faulty cooling fan, and put the server in a cooler environment to avoid the problem in the future.

Coming soon - new updates to Rogue Star and a new animation: the Life of the Sun! Watch for them!

MESSAGE #16. Tue Jul 1 16:50:08 2003. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

Ooops! The Workshop was down over the past weekend for a server upgrade and a few related problems. This almost never happens - sorry for the inconvenience!

MESSAGE #15. Mon Jun 9 18:20:16 2003. Kaveh Pahlevan wrote:

Our long-anticipated mainpage update is finally here! Among the changes are:
• A featured tool which changes periodically
• A new and interesting solar system fact every week
• Better organization of all the astronomy workshop tools
• Information about the Astronomy Workshop Working Group (AWWG!)
• And the patented Saturn rating system. (c) 2003

MESSAGE #14. Thu Dec 26 18:24:09 2002. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

Numerous Improvements this month:

• All Tools - Improved and Standardized Error Checking and Error Messages
• Rogue Star - Significant Reduction in Data File Size to Improve Download Speed for Users with Modems.
• Orbital Elements (3D) - Several Bug Fixes and Improved Graphics

MESSAGE #13. Mon Nov 25 19:38:06 2002. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

The Satellite Integrator and 3-Body Integrator applications went back online Saturday afternoon, and Rogue Star returned to active duty 20 minutes ago!

MESSAGE #12. Sat Nov 23 10:44:35 2002. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

Astronomy Workshop Users:

We are in the process of upgrading the Astronomy Workshop server. The new server is still at http://janus.astro.umd.edu/, and it is about 10 times faster than the old one. You should notice significant performance improvements in almost all applications, especially the Orbital Integration programs. We are still tracking down a few bugs - notably in the "Rogue Star", "Planetary Satellite Integrator", and "Three Body Integrator" applications. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please report any other problems that you might have to me! Cheers, Doug Hamilton

MESSAGE #11. Fri Aug 3 10:32:38 2001. Mike Asbury wrote:

We've got a new program under the "Astronomy for Beginner's" section. This program, called Rogue Star, will let you send another star through the Solar System and see what kind of havoc it will cause.

Hope you like it! As always, comments are welcomed!

MESSAGE #10. Thu Jun 14 13:12:44 2001. Mandy Proctor wrote:

We have updated the Working with Equations page. There are more equations and you may now select which equations you would like to work with.

The Satellite and Planetary Calculators have also been upgraded. Both pages have error checkers to spot when you have may an error in entering your equation. Enjoy!!

MESSAGE #9. Fri Apr 13 16:07:13 2001. Mike Asbury wrote:

We have updated the Solar System Viewer with some new features. Now you can control the speed of the animation. You can even stop it and start it up again. Also, now the comets show the name associated with them, so you can watch for your favorite comet.

We have also update the Satellite Viewer, to include the newest moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus!

Lastly, we have updated the ExtraSolar Planets applet to include all the known multiplanet extrasolar planetary systems!

Have fun with these new additions!

MESSAGE #8. Tue Dec 5 19:14:58 2000. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

The last lingering bugs from the server upgrade have finally been squashed! The orbital integrators are all back on line now. I learned more about how twitchy a server can be than I ever wanted to know. No more server upgrades for a few years!

MESSAGE #7. Fri Aug 18 17:01:58 2000. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

We have upgraded the Astronomy Workshop server software. An improved response time should be noticeable, especially for the java animations in the Solar System Viewers, and Working with Orbits sections.

We have also added an index to the main page which lists all Astronomy Workshop tools currently available. We hope that this will be useful!

MESSAGE #6. Wed Jul 19 13:31:29 2000. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

We have developed two new calculator for the Astronomy Workshop and posted them on the main webpage. One calculator allow you to compare data from the nine planets, while the other operates on the 63 moons in the solar system. Calculate the escape velocity, the surface gravity, the orbital period, or one of more than ten other pre-defined quantities for each of these objects. Or create and evaluate your own formulae. The output is an easy-to-read table which allows the moons and planets of our Solar System to be compared at a glance.

Enjoy!

MESSAGE #5. Mon Jan 10 14:36:26 2000. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

Counters have been added to the main Astronomy Workshop page and the Solar System Collisions page.

MESSAGE #4. Fri Jan 7 11:42:59 2000. Mike Asbury wrote:

An animated simulation program called, "Build Your Own Solar System" has been added to the "Astronomy for Beginners" section. This program allows you to pick from 1-4 planets and place them around a star of your choice. What you get back is an animated view of your solar system, with pictures of your planets.

Could life exist in your solar system? Try it and find out!

MESSAGE #3. Mon Nov 29 14:37:53 1999. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

We have removed the passwords formerly required by several of the tools in "Orbital Simulations". In addition, we now have four new simplified versions of the Three-Body Integrator available. Try them out!

MESSAGE #2. Tue Nov 9 19:22:16 1999. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

The server for The Astronomy Workshop has been upgraded to a fast new machine. Speed increases should be especially noticeable for the links in the "Orbital Simulations" section.

Two new animated "Solar System Viewers" are now available. One shows the motions of the planets, comets, asteroids, and Kuiper belt objects in our Solar System. The other animates the two known multiple-planet extrasolar Solar Systems.

Enjoy!

MESSAGE #1. Mon Sep 6 15:41:46 1999. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

Four new Bulletin Boards are now available for use with the Astronomy Workshop! It is my hope that users of the Astronomy Workshop will share their experiences and ideas with each other and with us.

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