Some astronomy news sources:
New York Times most reliable newspaper source of science news
CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post are some other possible sources
Universe Today
Astronomy Picture of the Day Lots of fabulous images, with explanatory text that sometimes links to interesting new results.
Scientific American But don’t pick big articles.
Sky and Telescope magazine. Best magazine for amateur astronomers.
Astronomy magazine. Another popular astronomy magazine
Bad Astronomy blog. Now hosted by Discover magazine.
Phil Plait blogs on recent results. Often has an interesting discussion, but the problem is that he typically doesn’t mention names unless they are his friends or if they illuminate his past career as an astronomer, so it can be more difficult to track down sources.
Universe Today On-line magazine focused on astronomy-
Dynamics of Cats blog. Penn State astronomer blogs on things of interest. Some of these are interesting recent astronomy results.
Astrobites blog. A Harvard astronomy grad students highlight a recent astro-ph article.
Geared toward scientists and astronomers: If the results have been peer-reviewed, you can usually find more information at one of the following sources, once you have the author names (See in particular ADS). If result has not been peer reviewed, or at least submitted for publication to a peer-reviewed journal, then you probably need a particularly skeptical view. Much of what gets in the press is the result of press releases by universities and especially NASA with a view towards PR. Press releases or news stories based 100% on press releases are rather biased, and often are not peer-reviewed.
Nature magazine. Along with Science, this is the premier peer-reviewed general science journal. . Need to be on UM network or log into journal access via library web site for full access
Click on Earth sciences or Physics; no separate astronomy link, even though there is excellent coverage of astronomy. Check out Nature News
Science magazine. Publication of the AAAS. Tends to bias towards life sciences and planetary science rather than stellar and extragalactic astronomy. Need to be on UM network or log into journal access via library web site for full access
Look especially at “news of the week”; perhaps also “news focus”
Note that you can go back in time a long ways.
Astro-ph Latest astrophysics “preprints”. Often not yet “refereed” (i.e. peer-reviewed). These are for the specialists in the field. Preprints available in pdf form. You don’t need a subscription or to be on campus! Click on the pdf version
Astrobites Graduate students write about some of the most interesting papers on Astro-ph, with physical science undergrads as target audience.
ADS Search for papers and abstracts in astronomy literature (and preprints), based on authors, title, abstract, etc. Full text of most journals requires UM network or log into library site.
Electronic version of this file is at