Skyscript Astrology Forum

Hi guys,

Just dropping by to say that Coursera has a free Astronomy course for those who interested. I joined the course because I wanted to understand how the natal chart was constructed.

I have to say that this course covers many terms that will be useful to know, like right ascension, declination, latitude, azimuth, etc. It also explains celestial coordinates and provides some simulations of the night sky.

Week 1 was especially enlightening for Astrologers. I highly recommend this course. Since the course has just begun, the Assistants and the Instructor (from Duke University) is quite involved in the forums, so that's really a plus.

https://www.coursera.org/course/introastro



Of course, some of you may already know the information.



There are some other free astronomy courses out there, but they did not cover Positional Astronomy (the things I talked about above) like the Coursera course does.

I am listing them here for reference:

1) https://www.open2study.com/courses/astr ... technology
2) https://www.udemy.com/astronomy-state-of-the-art/

I'm taking this course too, Larxene.

Just today I saw in the course forums that someone had posted a link to one of the Skyscript articles (this one: http://www.skyscript.co.uk/lss.html). I immediately thought there was someone else from here besides me, and I see I was not wrong!

Hi Larxene and Pisces girl,

What is the catch in offering free courses? When they actually charge?

I am inclined to enroll for this astronomy course too, plus recommending it to people I know.

There is no catch.

Most of the courses in Coursera are free, although there is a small number of courses that allow you to go on the Premium track.

The universities are doing this mostly for free publicity and also to experiment with online education.

I would not recommend a "free" material if it was not actually free.



@Pisces:

Hehe.

Thanks Larxene,

Here I go and would recommend this website to all the people I know.

The first part of the course sounds interesting for us astrologers...

I used to teach basics of astronomy to my pupils, before diving into "how to calculate and draw my/any horoscope", understanding thusly why that planet went there in the chart and nowhere else, but with more and more people getting access to computers and the internet, people seemed to lose their interest to invest in these fundamentals.

Maybe this approach may make some of them smarter yet!

Thanks for sharing,

and happy seasons !

On the contrary, the main reason I joined was because of the materials in Week 1.

@Larxene,
you posted the link to Astronomy course but coursera is a goldmine of courses.
I joined the Biostatistics and Cryptography course

Thanks

PD