There are two main stories that I am working on at moment. The first I'm presently fine with (it is a joint work with my wife Goldie), the second however is my work alone. The second is what I need some help with, I used to have several books and magazines as well as websites that I knew of with the information that I needed, however I now have very few if any of these resources left after multiple moves and the lose of three computers. So if anyone can help me, what I'd appreciate if you could, is any information on the following: 1) A listing of suns along with type, luminous intensity, and distance. 2) A detailed analysis of Venus, Uranus, and Europa. 3) Any notes on non-terrestrial evolution. Kind of odd things, I know.. but while I do want to be creative in this story, I at the same time do not wish to create a new planet in the Sol system, nor do I want to suddenly say there is a nebula there when there's actually a sun or the void between the arms of the galaxy.
Whenever I find I need information, I turn to my friend Google. He is so awesome.. he can tell me anything! And it can sometimes take me hours to find exactly what I am looking for, but at least I ~know~ exactly what I am after - and might find some other inspirational things along the way. Isn't the research aspect fun as well? Especially when you end up having to look at 20 different websites, just to make sure your information matches up. Someone might phrase something in such a way to trigger your imagination for a plot twist, or something else you can add to the story. The research is half the battle.
It is, I have approximately 23MBs at present of text and data on various extra-solar planes and stars, however it doesn't mean I'm done! I'm interested in seeing if anyone has anything that I might have missed, I know that we do not know a lot about these things even in the scientific world. For instance, how many planets if any, orbit Alpha Proxima? Are there any other wise of potential FTL travel other than "warp", spacial folding, or gravitational acceleration?
Trouble is, a great deal of that information remains tenuous. Speculations from a few years ago may now be superceded or at least doubtful. Therefore, your previously collected information could already be obsolete. Still, it sucks to lose resources like that. I have collections of my own of that sort of info, although not as much about the Solar planets. I cast my eyes a bit further out for my major projects. Truth be told, my books on stellar evolution and sky catalogs are pretty well buried. I'd have a hard time laying hands on most of them. These days, I too fall back mostly on google for information like relative and absolute magnitudes, spectral classes, and the like, and it isn't as easy to put together as some of the older texts. It's easier to find useless trivia about pop stars than statistics about the stars in this arm of the galaxy. Ben Bova has a series of books set in our solar system, and they conatin a lot of current information about what we know of the inner planets. The NASA and JPL sites are also good sources to look to.
Take a look at Physorg.com. Good website to keep track of all things science. You can narrow it down to astronomy for recent discoveries.
Yeah, when I was in college theoretical particle physics was my major, but the stars where what I really wanted. I wasn't allowed to take astrophysics until I was a grad student which sadly never happened, so even though I trudged my way through seminars and tests on quarks, neutrinos, and even the occasional string theory, afraid that purdue kept most of the other good classes out of my listings. Didn't stop me from buying the books though.
