A few "professional" astronomical links:

Only a small selection - there are many more to be found on the AstroLinks page of the Institute for Astronomy in Vienna.

• CDS bibliographic service - absolutely necessary for every astronomer. A local mirror of the ADS Abstract service is also there.
• Astronomical Data Center - the American counterpart to CDS; located at NASA.
• Simbad on the Web and Aladin Interactive Sky Atlas which are part of the CDS.
• NED - the NASA Extragalactic Database with its complete astronomical abstract service. The knowledge base Level 5 includes a fair number of extragalactic articles.
• Preprint servers: The e-Print archive, click here to go directly to Astrophysics.
• The Digitized Sky Survey - scans of the Palomar Observatory Sky Surveys and UK Schmidt Telescope plates of the whole sky at STScI in Baltimore, USA or at ST-ECF in Munich, Germany or at CADC in Canada.
• AIPS++ Glossery of Astronomical terms.
• AstroWeb - Searchable list of astronomy resources on the internet
• The Insituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC). I had the pleasure to stay for several observing runs at the institute's Observatorio del Teide (OT) in 2001 and 2002.
• The Ultimate Astronomy Career Guide which focuses on providing astronomy students and professionals with astronomy career resources

Weather Links:

• ZAMG - Current infrared satellite image, weather forecast for all of Austria and for Lower Austria, cloud prognosis and the INCA analysis (in German)
• ORF Wetter: Current weather data for Lower Austria, 6-day forecast, Alpine Weather forecast.
• SAT24: Visual and Infrared satellite image sequences of the alpine region, often updated, good resolution.
• Wetterzentrale.de: Current Meteosat IR image.
• The high-res satellite image of Central Europe, provided by DLR, updated approx. two times a day.
• AustroControl - Detailed & (nearly) current weather data of many towns in Austria and European capitals. Click here for the Austria and here for the Vienna/Lower Austria current weather map.
• www.wetter.at - relatively new, they have a cloud prognosis ranging about 2 days in advance.
• meteoblue numerical weather predicition - they provide local weather predictions and also an astronomical seeing forecast! Click here for the cloud prognosis for Austria.
• CRWS Jet Stream Analysis - of interest for Europe is the North Atlantic analysis and forecasts.
• Panorama Cameras in Austria: Very useful for determining what the sky currently looks like near your favorite observing site. Websites: TW1, ASFINAG (showing highways, but also the sky), Wetter Panorama (including local weather data, but only Lower Austria). Interesting for the surroundings of Vienna/Austria are the LiveCam Vienna and the cameras at Institute for Astronomy (Vienna and Schöpfl), Unterberg, Rohr am Gebirge, Puchberg, Raxalpe, Sonnwendstein, Türnitz, Annaberg, Ötscher, Mariazell, Rust am Neusiedler See and Dürnstein.
• Alpine weather report by Alpenverein.
• Wettervorhersage für Amateurastronomen by space-agents.de featuring detailed forecast charts which include low-level clouds, cirrus clouds and the jet stream.
• European weather forecast charts, by Met-Office UK: Current analysis 0/6/12/18 UT and 24h, 36h, 48h, 60h, 72h, 84h, 96h, 108h, 120h and 132h in advance. The same, provided by US-Air Force in Europe: Current analysis, 24h, 48h, 72h, 96h and 120h in advance. Another set of charts provided by HIRLAM: 6h, 12h, 24h, 36h, 48h and 60h in advance.
• ECMWF and MRF medium-range forecasts for Europe, up to 6 days in advance. BOLAM has a cloud prognosis up to 72 hours in advance.
• The weather pages of wetterklima.de and wetterzentrale.de, Germany, whom I owe most of these links to.

Amateur Astronomy and Astrophotography Ressources:

• An astonishing amount of information can be found at CalSKY, an online astronomical calendar. Excellent!
• GSOC Satellite Predictions provided by DLR in Germany - if you want to know when and where which satellite will be crossing the sky above your observing site, this is the place you look for. They have a large database where even the location of every small village anywhere in the world is included. They do even have exact sky charts for the satellite crossings!
• JPL - the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena/USA: Current space mission updates, lots of pretty pictures etc.
• The IAU Minor Planet Center: List and emphemerides of currently visible comets. Additional information concering comets can be found at Cometography.com and at the A.L.P.O. Comet Section.
• Interactive sky atlases: wikisky.org and Google Sky.
• So, you want to buy a telescope or a piece of equipment? Or you are just interested in good telescope reviews? Visit the Telescope Reviews page by Ed Ting, Cloudy Nights Telescope Reviews or Todd Gross's Astro-Review Pages!
• Some US and worldwide telescope & accessoires dealers: Meade, Celestron, Vixen, Orion, Astro-Physics, Tele Vue, Losmandy, SBIG, Takahashi Telescopes Europe, TMB Optical USA and Starlight Xpress.
• Telescope dealers in Germany and Switzerland: Baader Planetarium; Intercon-Spacetec; AOKswiss who produces superb mounts and sells some unusual telescopes; Phillip Keller who produces Schmidt Cameras, Hypergraphs/Deltagraphs, Ritchey-Chretiens and other outstanding telescopes; APM Telescopes Markus Ludes, a telescope dealer with some very interesting offers, including Russian telescopes; Teleskop-Service Wolfgang Ransburg in Munich with some interesting low-price offers.
• Telescope dealers in Austria: Astro Systeme Austria (ASA), Astroshop.at, Astro Experts, Teleskop & Sternwarte Zentrum and j.müller optik & fotografie
• Deep Sky Corner - descriptions of all stellar constellations, their history, and objects therein. Provided by astro!nfo in Germany.
• Gary Honis' website, including camera modifications for astrophotography
• Periodic error measurements of many mounts by Christophe Demeautis (in French)
• CCD Images of the Sharpless Catalog
• Color vs. Mono Camera Match by Michael A. Siniscalchi
• Fast Astrograph Considerations by Dave Erickson

Amateur astronomy links:

• astronomieforum.at, a very active forum for amateur astronomy in Austria.
• astronomie.de is a good place to start if you want to know something about amateur astronomy in Germany. They also have an Astro Market there.
• Wiener Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Astronomie (WAA) - a very active astronomy club in Vienna, they always have the most recent astronomical news there.
• Sky&Telescope - the most popular amateur astronomy magazine worldwide
• Astronomy - the second great astronomy magazine in USA
• Sterne und Weltraum and interstellarum - two great astronomy magazines in German
• A selection of Austrian astrophotographers: Gerhard Bachmayer (NÖ), Dieter Beer (NÖ), Daniel Gütl (St), Robert Häberle (NÖ), Dietmar Hager (OÖ), Martin Helm (NÖ), Rochus Hess (Sb), Gerald Hitz (W), Bernhard Hubl (OÖ), Michael Karrer (St), Bruno Kowatschik (B), Werner Pribil (NÖ), Michael Posavec (W), Werner Probst (K), Wolfgang Promper (NÖ), Gerald Rhemann (W), Wolfgang Ries (Privatsternwarte Seng) (OÖ), Philipp Salzgeber (Vgb), Johannes Schedler (Panther Observatory) (St), Manfred Schwarz, Jürgen Stöger (NÖ), Herbert Walter (OÖ), Gerald Wagner (W), Manfred Wasshuber (NÖ), Peter Wienerroither (W), Rainer Zmaritsch & Alexander Gross (W).
• Astronomie in Österreich - Links to all astro-related organizations in Austria

Pretty Pictures:

• HST (Hubble Space Telescope) pictures - check them out at STScI in Baltimore, USA. The most beautiful HST-pictures can be found in The Hubble Heritage Archive
• SEDS at Arizona University - Messier objects pictures archive.
• NASA's Planetary Photojournal - spacecraft images of all solar system bodies. More information can be found at The Nine Planets by SEDS.
• AAO - Superb pictures taken with the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope by David Malin at Siding Spring/Australia.
• The NOAO image gallery.
• Astronomy Picture of the Day provided by NASA.
• Skyfactory - The Factory of Night-Sky Wonders by Davide De Martin, who uses photographic plates taken at Palomar Observatory for producing really stunning color images.
• Ok, now for some of the very best astroimagers & astro-imaging groups worldwide, expect some really breathtaking astro-images and lots of info: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (blog), Adam Block, Steve Cannistra, Russell Croman, Thomas V. Davis, Iván Éder, Neil Fleming, Bob Franke, Jordi Gallego, Rolf Geissinger, Robert Gendler, Stéphane Guisard, Tony & Daphne Hallas, Dave Jurasevich Philipp Keller and his customers, Thierry Legault (high-res imaging), Stephen Leshin, Jerry Lodriguss, J-P Metsavainio (blog), Osservatorio MTM, Philip Perkins, Robert Reeves, Dean Rowe, Antonio F. Sánchez, Stefan Seip, Spiegelteam, Star Shadows Remote Observatory, Loke Kun Tan, Chuck Vaughn, Wei-Hao Wang.

Photography Links:

• Nikon Europe Support Centre (German language)
• Canon Software Centre (German language)
• Digital Camera Reviews and News: Digital Photography Review: Forums, Glossary, FAQ
• The Luminous Landscape
• KenRockwell.com
• Thom Hogan's Nikon Field Guide and Nikon Flash Guide
• Cambridge in Colour - Digital Photography Tutorials

Some non-astronomical links

• Search engines: Google.com, Google.at, Google.de, Alta Vista (in Austria: Austronaut), Excite, alltheweb, HotBot, MetaCrawler (accesses several databases), Yahoo.
• WWW lists sorted by subject: WWW virtual library, yahoo, EINet Galaxy.
• E-mail address search: Yahoo! People Search, InternetAddressFinder, WhoWhere.
• Newsgroups: Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups, Internet Frequently Asked Questions.
• Research in Austria: bm:bwk (Science Ministry), FWF (Science Foundation).
• Help for users of C, HTML (German Introduction, V3.2 reference, HTML Basics, Web page test (The Escape's Web Page Analyzer), Word Frequency Counter.
• Unit Converter at FU Berlin, and Periodic System of Elements at uniterra.de.
• amazon.de - books, music, DVD, video, software etc.
• download.com - a lot of useful programs, even better is Tucows.
• Currency Converter, EURO currencies.
• Good Austrian PC suppliers: NRE, Goldadler, academia. See also geizhals.at and idealo.at - price comparison for computer, electronics and photo stuff.
• ÖAMTC information on weather and road conditions in Autria
• Dictionaries and translation services: Leo, Google, Alta Vista "babelfish". Thesauri: Roget's, Worldnet.
• Encyclopedia: Wikipedia (German Main Page), infoplease, xipolis, and an interactive atlas (MapQuest).
• Telephone directories: for Austria and Germany; postal (zip) codes for USA.
• Train connections from ÖBB, DB (Germany; includes other countries) and SBB (Switzerland).
• Airlines: AUA, British Airways, KLM, Lufthansa, Swiss. VIEnna Airport.
• Online Learning: HowStuffWorks.com, mathe online (in German).
• Maps, address search etc.: Austrian Map online, Vienna City Map.
• Vienna events: cinema program.
• Media Worldwide: Daily news from USA and Germany. CNN, Time magazine, Die Zeit.
• Media in Austria: ORF, Austrian Press Agency, Falter, Kurier, News, Die Presse, Der Standard, Wiener Zeitung.