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There is a huge range of excellent books and websites that offer good background reading for teachers as well as further ideas for the classroom. Some of these are:
 Books
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How to Gaze at the Southern Stars
Hall, Richard. 2004 Awa Press, Wellington.
A wonderful easy-to-read book, jam-packed with information on how to find you way around our night sky.
- Space Shuttle: The first 20 years
Reichhardt, Tony (ed). 2002 DK Publishing, New York.
A beautiful hardcover book with full-colour glossy photos taken by those who've been on board the various shuttle flights since the first Columbia mission in 1981. Great stories accompany them, and there are details of all flights from the first in April 1981 to when the book was written in March 2001.
Holland, Simon (ed). 2001 Dorling Kindersley Limited, London.
A great, fully-illustrated book for the classroom. It looks at all the planets in our solar system as well as the life of a star and life in space.
NOTE: there is also a version in te reo Maori: Tuarangi.
- Night Skies above New Zealand
Hyde, Vicki. 2003 New Holland Publishers (NZ).
This book offers good background knowledge on many aspects of our southern skies - from earliest navigational knowledge needed for voyaging to current astronomical knowledge.
- 1000 Things You Should Know About Space
Farndon, John. 2000 Miles Kelly Publishing, Essex, United Kingdom.
An excellent facts book, set out for students in an easy-to-understand form. There is information on cosmic rays, solar eruptions, the planets, and much more.
- Naked Eye Wonders: A short guide to the stars as seen from Aotearoa New Zealand
Taylor, Paul. 2001 (Third edition) Paul Taylor, Auckland, New Zealand.
This book is a little gem! It's easy-to-read and understand and allows you to go out and search for the well-known stars and constellations yourself. Both Western and Maori names are given. Includes a fold-out star chart.
- The New Zealand Astronomical Yearbook 2005
Stardome Observatory, Royal Oak, Auckland.
For those who have background knowledge in using star charts, this is a very useful book. It includes planet rise and set times, moon and sun rise times - along with more specific articles.
Head, Marilyn (ed). Quarterly magazine published by the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand.
A great magazine for New Zealand families. Packed with articles, things to make, puzzles, and constellations to watch out for. Local libraries and schools should have this, but if not you can subscribe by emailing marilyn@actrix.co.nz .
Spence, Pam (ed). 2002 Chancellor Press, London.
A more in-depth look at astronomy, star evolution, and our solar system. Well illustrated.
Wolfe, Richard and Pamela. 2001 Random House New Zealand.
A lovely picture book about Walter who loved collecting and built a machine that let him discover a new planet.
 Websites
An excellent site about Saturn and its moons. There are links to the Cassini-Huygens site from here as well.
An interactive game for students where they design a space station. There are living-in-space teachers' resources listed here too.
Carter Observatory is the national observatory of New Zealand, situated in Wellington. Here you can get up-to-date information on what Carter has to offer and world astronomcal news.
This site offers information about the latest astronomy news, what's happening in our southern night sky, and Maori astronomy. It also provides links to the Transit of Venus website and much more!
Neutrinos are those incredibly tiny particles that Pauline Harris studies - this site might help your background knowledge!
This site has more than 25 hands-on science activities for your classroom and has prepared pages for both teachers and students for exploring Earth, the planets, geology, and space sciences .
This is the page for the Origins programme within the NASA site. It provides information and latest images from the Spitzer and Hubble telescopes. It also looks at age-old questions, such as, is there life on planets outside our solar system? Amazing images.
Free, printable sky maps for southern and northern hemispheres. You can also print past months' maps.
The NASA and JPL home page for the Cassini-Huygens mission. Contains latest images sent from Cassini.
This is a great site that allows students to see real time images of Earth - who has night, who has daytime. Amazing Moon images as well.
Downloadable information on how to build your own telescope.
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