Getting something useful out of the internet

Hopefully you'll find a few things here that will help you out.

Web search engines

You are probably already familiar with search engines, but many people just use whatever their ISP or online service sets up for them. It's worth playing around with different systems; some are better suited to some tasks than others.

My favorite search engine is Altavista. It's probably got the biggest database out there. However, you must get some practice at writing queries for it, or you can wind up with zillions of irrelevant hits. Generally all you need to know about is quoting, and using + and -. For instance, if you want to know about astrophotography of the horsehead nebula, but don't want to see pages about CCD's, you could type +PHOTOGRAPHY +"HORSEHEAD NEBULA" -CCD. You will then only see pages that have both of the first two, but never the last. Without the pluses, you would see pages that were about photography but didn't mention the horsehead nebula, or vice versa.

Another favorite is Yahoo. This is certainly a good search engine, and it's made better by the fact that the database is managed by hand, rather than being automatically generated. However, this also means that their database is more limited. One of my favorite cute tricks is to take advantage of yahoo's category listings in the following manner. Suppose you want to find out companies that make CCD Cameras. You know about SBIG (Santa Barbara Instruments Group). Go to Yahoo, type in SBIG CCD CAMERA. You get a listing of hits, and the first hits will be those that Yahoo has sorted into categories. Now, rather than clicking on the hits, CLICK ON THE CATEGORY for a likely sounding hit. You will now see all related web sites.

Usenet

One of the best sources of information around is "usenet," otherwise known as "newsgroups" or "discussion groups."

Keep in mind that Usenet is also full of misinformation and people who, quite frankly, don't know what they're talking about, but they don't let that stop them. Look for a concensus of opinion, not just one person saying a certain telescope is great, or it sucks, etc.

For amateur astronomy, most of the action takes place on a newsgroup called "sci.astro.amateur". There are a lot of very knowledgeable and talented people that hang out there. However, before you get carried away, read the following.

Usenet smarts

First, read the FAQ for a newsgroup. These are archived at the primary Usenet FAQ Archive at ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/. Unfortunately sci.astro.amateur doesn't have an official FAQ. However, there are the following documents that you should look at:
How to keep <sci.astro.amateur> clean
This has good info on what to do and what not to do on the newsgroup.

When you first come to a newsgroup, don't just barge in and start asking questions. Generally it's considered to be good form to listen without posting (this is called "lurking") for at least a few days, hopefully a week or two, first.

Also, keep in mind that almost all questions have already been asked, and answered. You can find the answers (usually more than you wanted to know) to almost any astronomy related question by going through the archives of the newgroup. This brings me to...

The most useful thing on the internet

Well, pretty darn important to me, anyway. Go to this site and check it out: http://www.dejanews.com. This site archives all major non-binary newsgroups and has a very fast, effective search engine. You probably want to go to "power search" and put "sci.astro.amateur" in the "Forum" box. Type the subject you're interested in up top and hit the "Find" button. Voila! Like I said, more than you probably wanted to know. I use this site whenever I make a major purchase of any kind.