Astronomy

I'm just getting into astronomy, having had some interest since I was a kid, and as I join club and sign up for courses and watch shows or movies, I'll try to capture my thoughts here for folks that might follow behind in case they're useful. I'll be playing with the organization a bit to try to find the best configuration.

CommuniVersity

CommuniVersity at the Unviversity of Cincinnati offers a few classes, hosted and taught by the folks from the Cincinnati Observatory. They cover the history of the Observatory and basic stargazing. As of March 2019 they cost $35 each, and generally interesting, but pretty basic. Check out the full class-by-class reviews here.

The Great Courses

There are a bunch of online course websites, some with AppleTV or Roku apps, portending to offer college-level classes. Of those, The Great Courses seems to be the best, and I think (I haven't confirmed this) it's because they were publishing DVDs for years before web-teaching was really a thing. Some of their classes are quite expensive, but fortunately my library (the Cincinnati Public Library) offers both DVDs of many of their courses, but has a partnership with Kanopy which allows me to watch a select few titles each month. Check out the full course-by-course reviews here.

Udemy

Udemy has some more basic courses, so they'll not all taught by P.hd. professors as the Great Courses ones are, but they are also cheaper. By the way, all of these services are constantly running (and sending you offers for) new deals and lower prices, so if you see something you like maybe wait a week or two, you can probably get it cheaper. Anyway, I had high hopes for some of these, and got a few fairly affordably, but found they were a little disappointing. Check out my Udemy page for full details.