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Open science resources

This the second version of this page. There is unavoidable overlap between some categories, particularly "astronomy" and "geophysics". I know it's incomplete: it probably always will be, but suggestions for worthy additions are welcome to <hils> <at> <newearth.demon.co.uk>

Contents

• About this list
• Open access journals
• Earth science
  • Atmosphere, meteorology and climatology
  • Geophysics. Geomagnetism, radio propagation, natural radio.
  • Seismology and volcanology
• Life science
  • Botany
  • Entomology. At present, butterflies and moths.
  • Marine biology
  • Miscellaneous
  • Ornithology
• Space science
  • Astrodynamics. Including artificial satellites.
  • Deep space
  • Miscellaneous
  • Near space. Sun, moon, planets, etc.
  • Optical astronomy, astrophotography
  • Radio astronomy
  • SETI
  • Software
• Miscellaneous and interdisciplinary
  • Electronics
  • Mathematics
  • Miscellaneous
  • Software

About this list

This is a list of online resources which foster citizen participation in science. It is more inclusive than the so-called "citizen science" promoted elsewhere. It includes links to

• practical and theoretical articles
• open mailing lists and forums
• data collections
• free software
• equipment design and review

Unless described otherwise, everything listed is available free and without registration. Profit-making organisations are not listed unless they provide a significant open content. Note that sites may move or disappear without warning. Authors who give their software free may still appreciate constructive feedback or cash donations.

Open access journals

The European Geosciences Union is a leader in the field of open access publishing. Its online journals are excellent examples of how to distribute knowledge via a well-designed website, and they shame the moneygrabbing parasites who run many other science journals.

A number of journals are being made available to "developing countries" through various fudged cost-reduction schemes. Some of these are listed in EBSCO's Open Science Directory. The Directory of open access journals is worth a look, though it includes some material which is not really open access. ScientificCommons claims to index 13 million freely accessible publications. Genuinely open access journals which I have reviewed (of necessity briefly) are listed individually below.

The Public Library of Science is "a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource."

Earth science

Atmosphere, meteorology and climatology

• APTDecoder. Sophisticated APT weather satellite image decoding software capable of working as a fully-automated receiving, processing, and uploading system. Windoze only. VHF receiver required. Possible incompatibility with ImageMagick.
• Atmospheric optics. Les Cowley's colourful photographs and detailed explanations of visual atmospheric phenomena. Includes simulation software.
• Blitzortung. A network of lightning monitoring stations centered on central Europe. Real-time maps and data, alas archived data is now only available to people wealthy enough to buy their own monitoring stations.
• Climate Audit. Steve McIntyre's skeptical commentary on climate research.
• Climate of the past. "An Interactive Open Access Journal of the European Geosciences Union."
• CWOP. Citizen Weather Observer Program. A private-public partnership which takes weather data from citizens around the world, quality checks it, and makes it available for weather services and researchers.
• Jeppesen general aviation weather maps. Neat interacive aviation weather maps for US, Europe, Australia, Canada and Mexico.
• Light Pollution. Information in Italian and English by Pierantonio Cinzano on all aspects of light pollution, including many maps, mostly of Europe.
• Météociel. French weather with very nice North Atlantic forecast maps.
• Meteorology Guide. "A a collection of web-based instructional modules that use multimedia technology and the dynamic capabilities of the web" from the University of Illinois.
• NAVTEX decoder. Navtex bulletin decoder with upload function. Windoze binary and Java versions. Includes an archive of bulletins received by a number of users.
• National Hurricane Center. Tracking hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific and Atlantic.
• NOAA NCDC climate data directory. Lots of historical data sets, including daily records for UK stations.
• RMI. Belgian public meteorological service.
• SAT24.com. Animated weather satellite pictures of Europe and Africa.
• Surface observations. Neat portal for displaying 24-hour worldwide METAR data, from the University of Wyoming's Department of Atmospheric Science.
• UK Met Office. Forecasts for the UK. Includes limited (recent) historical data.
• UK Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets. "A range of gridded datasets of meteorological variables for use in climate monitoring and climate modelling."
• UK Met Office Hadley Centre. Research into climate change. Includes FAQs.
• Weather charts. Lots of links to sources of weather charts and data.
• WeatherOnline. Commercial weather site with some nice maps and charts.

Geophysics

• abelian.org. Paul Nicholson's collection of live VLF audio streams, notes on VLF radio reception, forward scatter Leonid meteor observations, notes on observing SIDs.
• Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. "An Interactive Open Access Journal of the European Geosciences Union".
• Auroral Chorus. A partly commercial site which includes samples of natural radio sounds, receiver designs and receiving hints. A ready-built VLF receiver is available (from USA, cost approximately 250EUR).
• AuroraWatch. Magnetometer data from the UK (near Aberdeen) for the preceding 24h, and an aurora alert email service.
• Biogeosciences. "An Interactive Open Access Journal of the European Geosciences Union".
• CSSDP real-time oval. Real-time northern auroral oval plot from the Canadian Space Science Data Portal.
• DF5AI.NET. Volker Grassmann's investigations into unusual modes of VHF radio propagation such as thunderstorms, double hop sporadic E over water, and Hadley cell. Poor page design with some intriguing content.
• G7IZU radio reflection detection page. Andy Smith's automated radio monitoring system, based on 55MHz and 59MHz broadcast signals, for meteor shower, aurora, sporadic-E and solar flare propagation effects. Techniques are documented. Some pages are very large and poorly-designed.
• IT9ZUK monitoring station. Alessandro Longo's live VLF magnetic and seismographic data from Sicily.
• INGV. Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology. Includes space weather, local geomagnetic data, and libraries. In Italian and English.
• INSPIRE Project. "Interactive NASA space physics ionosphere radio experiments." A NASA-sponsored project for monitoring VLF radio emissions, the heart of which is a portable VLF receiver kit (from USA, cost approximately 80EUR).
• Intermagnet. "Professional" international magnetometer network with online data.
• Kiel longwave monitor. Observing the ionosphere by monitoring longwave radio, by Peter Wilhelm Schnoor.
• LWCA. The Longwave Club of America. Promoting "monitoring and experimentation on frequencies below the AM broadcast band". Mostly radio amateurs and listeners, but includes natural radio emissions. Message board with (poorly-indexed) archive.
• Natural radio VLF discussion group. Hosted by Yahoo.
• NCSIDO. Northern Colorado sudden ionospheric disturbance observatory. Data logging stopped in 2006, but there are detailed practical notes on VLF receiving hardware.
• OpenLab. A large collection of practical and theoretical articles about monitoring and analysing natural and man-made radio emissions at very low frequencies.
• Project SAM. "Simple aurora monitor." A small network of online magnetometers, primarily intended to give early warning of possible visual and radio auroras. Real-time data from a number of stations. A magnetometer kit is available (from Germany, cost approximately 150EUR) with custom logging software.
• SID monitoring station. Lionel Loudet's sophisticated monitoring station in southern France. (AAVSO observer A118.) Includes detailed descriptions of hardware and software.
• SID-GRB@home. Notes on building a VLF receiver to detect solar ionospheric disturbances caused by solar flares and gamma ray bursts. Somewhat chaotic.
• Solar terrestrial activity report. Compact summary of solar and geomagnetic activity, produced by Jan Alvestad for the DX Listeners Club.
• Space Weather Monitors (Stanford SOLAR Center). "An education project to build and distribute inexpensive ionospheric monitors to students around the world."
• Space Weather Prediction Center. US NOAA/NWS detailed descriptions of current and predicted space weather conditions. With extensive tutorials.
• Space Weather Radio. Tony Phillips' site includes live audio from 217MHz radar echoes from Texas received over New Mexico.
• spaceweather.com. "News and information about the Sun-Earth environment." Mostly links to primary data sources, and some good photographs.
• Stanford VLF group. Upper atmosphere research, including sprites.
• Tropospheric ducting forecasts for VHF and UHF. William R Hepburn's propagation maps based on meteorological forecasts.
• ULF-ELF radio discussion group. Schumann resonances, earthquake precursors, etc. Hosted by Yahoo.
• USGS National Geomagnetism program. Real-time monitoring of the Earth's magnetic field. North American stations with a global model and plenty of background information.
• VHF propagation maps. Jon Harder's experimental maps derived from amateur APRS packet propagation data.
• VLF papers. Collected by Thierry Alves.
• WSPRnet. Weak Signal Propagation Reporter Network. "A group of amateur radio operators [probing] radio frequency propagation conditions using very low power transmissions. The software is open source, and the data collected are available to the public."

Seismology and volcanology

• British Geological Survey Seismology home page. Maps and details (including raw data archive) of earthquakes around the UK.
• European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre. Detailed earthquake data for Europe.
• IRIS. Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology. "A university consortium sponsored by the National Science Foundation dedicated to exploring the Earth and enhancing awareness of seismology through the collection and distribution of geophysical data and development of educational programs and matarials."
• ORFEUS. Observatories and Research Facilities for European Seismology. A "non-profit foundation that aims at co-ordinating and promoting digital, broadband seismology in the European-Mediterranean area."
• Do plumes exist? Huge, erudite, and endearingly chaotic discussion of the origin of "hotspot" volcanism (mantle plumes).
• Redwood City Public Seismic Network. Articles on seismograph hardware and software, PSN-L mailing list etc.
• USGS National Earthquake Information Center. Extensive and accessible world earthquake data.

Life science

Botany

• Annals of Botany. Some (by no means all) articles are open access.
• British wild flowers. John Somerville's photographic guide to 1660 of Britain's wild flowers.
• Flora.cyberia. Photographs of plants of Europe and the Canary Islands.
• Floral images. John Crellin's photographic guide to flowers of NW Europe. Over 1000 species described with detailed biographical notes and multiple indexes.
• Plants for a Future. "Edible, medicinal and useful plants for a healthier world." Extensive details on edible wild plants, cultivation, preparation, cautions etc.
• Plants for a Future mailing list. Hosted by Yahoo.
• The seed site. How to collect, store, sow, germinate and exchange seeds.

Entomology

• Captain's European Butterfly Guide. Simon Coombes' photographic guide to 270 of Europe's butterflies. Good photographs, limited biographies, navigation could be better.
• Matt's European butterflies. Matt Rowlings' photographic guide to 370 of Europe's butterflies.
• Moths and butterflies of Europe and North Africa. By Paolo Mazzei, Diego Reggianti, Ilaria Pimpinelli with contributions from many photographers. Excellent photographs, limited biographies.
• UK moths. Ian Kimber's rich, superbly-designed guide to moths found in Britain and Ireland. Photographs and biographies.

Marine biology

• Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research PALAOA. Live audio stream from under the Antarctic Ocean.
• Marine Biological Association. Includes an online library.
• MarLIN. The marine life information network for Britain and Ireland. Species information, sightings, outreach.

Miscellaneous

• Amphibians and Reptiles of Europe. By Paolo Mazzei, Ilaria Pimpinelli with contributions from many photographers. Excellent photographs, limited biographies.
• Biology online. Forum, dictionary, articles and tutorials.
• The Cryosphere. "The open-access journal for environmental science... on all aspects of frozen water and ground on Earth and on other planetary bodies."
• Darwin Online. "The complete works of Charles Darwin... over 56,000 pages of searchable text and 157,000 electronic images."
• Environmental Research Letters. "The open-access journal for environmental science." Includes (among other things) an outstanding article on the deposition of Saharan dust in the Amazon Basin.
• Field Studies Council. Environment education "charity". They demonstrate their commitment to "bringing environmental understanding to all" by demanding money for almost all of it, but they have a free archive of the (somewhat esoteric) Field Studies journal (published 1959-2003).
• Global Biodiversity Information Facility. "Free and open access to biodiversity data."
• Journal of Animal Ecology. A journal of the British Ecological Society. Limited open access (articles from 1998 to two years after issue publication).
• Journal of Applied Ecology. A journal of the British Ecological Society. (Some articles appear to be open access.)
• Journal of Ecology. A journal of the British Ecological Society. Limited open access (articles from 1998 to two years after issue publication).
• A nature observer's scrapbook. Notes mostly on UK insects.
• NORA. NERC open research archive. The UK's Natural Environment Research Council limited archive of papers and reports.
• Planet Earth online. Environmental research news from the UK Natural Environment Research Council.
• Swissfungi. "A national inventory of fungi recorded in Switzerland." Includes distribution maps. Trilingual.
• Wildlife Sound Recording Society. Guidance on recording wildlife sounds, and a small sound library.

Ornithology

• Avibirds. "Online bird guide to the birds of Europe and Suriname." Includes illustrations, biographies, migration maps, literature library. Superb concept and content. There is also a version in Dutch.
• IBC. Internet Bird Collection. A library (windoze media format) of >26,000 videos of the world's birds.
• Oiseaux.net. Photographs of and articles (in French) about birds.
• World Bird Database. Developed and hosted by BirdLife, sponsored by RSPB.

Space science

Astrodynamics

• Amsat-BB archives. Archives of the Amsat mailing list, discussing amateur radio satellites. May contain political dogfights.
• CelesTrak. T S Kelso's repository of orbital elements of artificial satellites and numerous articles on astrodynamics.
• HearSat-L archives. A mailing list for people interested in making radio observations of artificial satellites.
• ISS Fan Club. Current information about the International Space Station.
• Encyclopedia Astronautica. Mark Wade's comprehensive, detailed guide to the history and technology of space exploration.
• Heavens above. Real-time tracking and visibility predictions and maps for artificial satellites (including Iridium flares), planets and comets.
• Heavensat. Software for predicting visibility of artificial satellites. Includes sky simulator. Windoze.
• Orbiter. Astrodynamically rigorous spaceflight simulator. Extendable, with many third-party spacecraft from fact and fiction. Windoze.
• Remote sensing tutorial. By Nicholas Short of NASA.
• SeeSat-L archives. A mailing list for people interested in making visual observations of artificial satellites.
• Sven's Space Place. Sven Grahn's collection of articles on "space history, space radio tracking, and space technology".

Deep space

• AAVSO. American Association of Variable Star Observers.
• Galaxy Zoo 2. Community visual classification of galaxies imaged by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Help academics sponge taxpayers' money via this badly-designed website.
• JR's website on Deep Sky Astronomy. José Ramón Torres' articles, CNebulaX sky map software, and beautiful printable "TriAtlas" sky maps to magnitudes 9, 11 and 13.
• Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Detailed images and 3-d maps of a quarter of the sky, with more being surveyed.
• Transitsearch. Guidance on photometric observing of transits of extrasolar planets using (relatively) simple equipment.

Miscellaneous

• Backyard Astronomy. Joel Gonzalez's remarkable, eclectic experiments with astrophotography, radio astronomy, and natural radio from Florida.
• Catching the light. Jerry Lodriguss' deep-sky astrophotographs, with detailed guidance on astrophotography and digital image processing techniques.
• Cloudy Nights. Reviews and discussion about astronomical telescopes, binoculars and accessories.
• Digital Sky. Pete Lawrence's site includes some superb astrophotographs.
• ESA. European Space Agency, includes information on current projects.
• ESO. European Southern Observatory, European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere.
• Handbook of Space Astronomy and Astrophysics. Online version of the 2nd edition (1982) of Martin V Zombeck's text, made available by the author.
• Hubble Space Telescope. European homepage with news, pictures, videos etc.
• IMCCE. Institut de Mecanique Celeste et de Calcul des Ephemerides. Research into celestial mechanics, astrometry, planetology, ephemeris development. The site map skips the pointlessly flash-dependent home page.
• Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. About the Jodrell Bank Observatory and MERLIN/VLBI. Includes information on research projects, some online tutorials, pulsar ephemerides, etc.
• Sky and Telescope. Online version of the famous magazine, with news, eclectic articles, advice for beginners, etc.
• Space physics text book of Oulu. Articles about plasma physics, regions and phenomena of interest (mostly the solar wind and geomagnetism).
• Transmission: the other side of SETI. Article by David F Mayer arguing that SETI projects should concentrate on specific visual wavelengths.
• Universe Today. Eclectic online magazine.
• US Naval Observatory: Astronomical Applications Department. Astronomical and navigational almanacs (including ephemerides).
• Worcester Park Observatory. Maurice Gavin's collection of photographs, equipment reviews, spectroscopy experiments and more.

Near space

• Geological Lunar Research Group. Poorly-designed website which includes the independent journal Selenology Today.
• IAU Commission 4: Topics related to ephemerides. Papers and information related to ephemerides, including JPL's planetary and lunar ephemerides, astronomical constants.
• IAU Minor Planet Center. Definitive data for minor planets. Some data are subscription-only, but most, including the MPCORB database of orbital elements, and elements and ephemerides of observable comets and minor planets in formats suitable for all common software planetaria, are freely available.
• International Meteor Organization. Hardcore meteor observers. Plenty of background information. Mailing list hosted by Yahoo.
• JPL near Earth orbit program. About comets and asteroids likely to come close to Earth.
• JPL solar system dynamics. "Information related to the orbits, physical characteristics, and discovery circumstances for most known natural bodies in orbit around our sun."
• Lunar Observing. Yahoo-hosted forum.
• The Mars Society. Public organisation dedicated to fostering the exploration and colonisation of Mars.
• MeteorObs. A mailing list for meteor observers. Some background information on meteors and observing them.
• Moon-net archives. Public mailing list for people interested in amateur radio EME (moonbounce) communication. Some of the discussions may also be of interest to radio astronomers.
• The Planetary Society. Membership body existing "to inspire the people of Earth to explore other worlds, understand our own, and seek life elsewhere".
• www.SolarMonitor.org. A near-realtime display of solar activity compiled from a number of observatories. Data archive.
• Solar observing by Peter Meadows. Drawings of the sun.
• Space Environment Center. NASA's pages describing current and past solar and geomagnetic activity.

Radio astronomy

• 3peaks radio astronomy. A home-made 3.7m steerable radio telescope in the UK's Peak District. Hardcore!
• K5SO. Joe Martin's radio moonbounce and radio astronomy experiments in New Mexico.
• Radio astronomy tutorial. From MIT.
• Radio JOVE. "Solar and planetary radio astronomy for schools". NASA-backed project to encourage US schools to build simple radio telescopes and share the results.
• SARA. Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers. Articles on hardware, software and methodology for low-cost radio astronomy. They also have a Google-hosted mailing list.

SETI

• Harvard SETI. Includes radio and optical SETI, and a fascinating detailed description of the construction of a remote-controllable OSETI observatory.
• SETI League. Organisation for people interested in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. Includes guidance on building and using radio telescopes, and signal processing.
• SETI mailing lists. SETI and BIOASTRO public mailing list archives.

Software

• Celestia. Cross-platform, extendable space simulator.
• Hnsky. Han Kleijn's sky chart software for Windoze. Works well on old PCs, easily customised, nice printed starcharts.
• Iris. Christian Buil's astronomical image processing software. Windoze.
• ORSA. Open-source, cross-platform, orbit visualisation tool. Updated very infrequently.
• Registax. Image stacking software. Windoze, Linux under Wine.
• SOFA. Standards of fundamental astronomy. "An accessible and authoritative set of constants, algorithms and procedures that implement standard models used in fundamental astronomy." Software in Fortran 77 and C, with explanatory notes.
• Stellarium. Fabien Chereau et al's cross-platform, open source planetarium (terrestrial sky simulator). Multilingual, multicultural, scriptable.

Miscellaneous

Electronics

• FreePCB. PCB design software with text-based data format, a large and extensible footprint library, and industry standard output. Windoze.
• LTspice. Electronic circuit schematic design (fairly inelegant) and circuit simulation (with data export) software for Windoze. Maintained by Linear Technology.
• Techlib. An extensive library of schematics and construction notes for a variety of electronic circuits. Includes VLF radio receivers etc.

Mathematics

• Gnuplot. Cross-platform, open source plotting software. Includes a number of useful maths functions.
• FFTW. Open source FFT library in C.
• GAL. General Astrodynamics Library. GPL library of astrodynamics routines in C/C++.
• Peter Luschny. Articles on maths.
• R project. Cross-platform, open source mathematical and statistical environment. Well-documented, nice data import functions, capable of top-quality plots in a variety of formats.
• Scilab. Open-source, cross-platform, numerical computation software. Personally I prefer R because of its better graphics, but matrix maths seems faster and more intuitive in Scilab. YMMV.
• SpeQ. Advanced (scientific/ statistical) graphing (export to EMF and BMP formats) calculator software by Jos de Jong. Windoze.
• Wolfram MathWorld. Extensive mathematics articles.

Miscellaneous

• Dictionary and word search. Fast, efficient online dictionaries.
• Etymology Dictionary. The origins of words.
• Microscopy UK. "An informal group of artists, writers, enthusiast microscopists, and computer techies working together from different countries." Includes articles and a free electronic magazine.
• OpenEEG. Collaborative home-made electroencephalograph project with a mailing list archive.
• Optimum Population Trust. "The leading think tank in the UK concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment."
• Science Daily. News and articles in science, health, environment and technology.

Software

• BOINC. "Open-source software for volunteer computing and grid computing." Uses computer idle time to do number-crunching for various research projects.
• CSVed. CSV file editor for Windoze.
• NetLogo. "A cross-platform multi-agent programmable modeling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena."
• nncron LITE. Windoze cron clone. A particularly accessible way of scheduling tasks which can be run from a command line.
• OpenOffice. Cross-platform, open source, heavyweight office software. Uses open document formats. Includes PDF export. Much preferable to Micro$oft's crappy bloatware equivalent.
• RRDtool. "The OpenSource industry standard, high performance data logging and graphing system for time series data. Use it to write your custom monitoring shell scripts or create whole applications using its Perl, Python, Ruby, TCL or PHP bindings."
• SpecLab. Wolfgang Buscher's AF analysis, DSP and logging "spectrum laboratory" software. PC soundcard. Highly configurable. Some configurations (eg VLF receiver, bat detector) need a fast PC. Windoze, allegedly works with Linux/Wine.

Document history

• 2008-06-15: first draft version
• 2008-06-21: first public version
• 2009-02-17: mathematics section added
• 2009-04-05: redesigned with new categories and subcategories
• 2009-11-18: latest version