Natural History sites worth visiting are the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, which gives information on current exhibits, opening times etc. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew site provides visitor information and access to plant databases. Conservation activities of the World-Wide Fund for Nature can be found on their WWF site.

Also at South Kensington, The Science Museum site gives information on exhibits, events and links to other museum sites. The European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, is interesting, not least because it is the birthplace of the World Wide Web.

The Museum & Galleries Commission has launched a website that will provide information on all MCG registered museums in the UK (about 1700 currently). Associated with this is a massive project to catalogue all the major assets of these museums to provide a "complete picture of the wealth of UK museum collections through a comprehensive database available on this website". It is due to go on-line in 2000, but there is a pilot site currently available.

For those interested in astronomy and space exploration, the Manchester University site, Jodrell Bank, keeps you up to date on radio astronomy projects, including MERLIN. The Florida Today Space Online, provides a fascinating history of US space missions and also provides information on current and forthcoming projects. Nine Planets is an incredible site giving a wealth of information on the Solar System, covering all the planets, most of their satellites and many of the larger asteroids. There are a large number of superb pictures of these bodies for viewing and downloading. Patch them into your Skyglobe or other astro software.

The monthly BBC TV astronomical programme "The Sky at Night" now has its own web site. Overseas visitors may be interested to know that the programme itself is something of a phenomenon - it has been screened monthly without fail since April, 1957. Even more remarkable, and even more of a phenomenon, is the programme's presenter, Patrick Moore, who has presided over every episode bar one, when he was laid low by a dodgy duck egg!

He was knighted in 2001.

The University of California at Berkeley is engaged in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme with data derived from the giant Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. The data is scanned to see if any of the radio signals received could have been generated by an intelligent life-form. They found that even with the powerful computers at their disposal they could not keep up with all the data generated.

They had the bright idea of inviting Internet users to help with the analysis. Most home computers are far more powerful than the "supercomputers" of 20 years ago and are quite capable of analysing small batches of data at a time. They provide the analytical software which is configured as a screensaver, so your computer is only engaged on their work when you are not using it. Far more productive than a scrolling marquee.  It's a bit like knitting, your computer can pick it up and put it down as often as necessary. If you want to know more, click the icon:

        Worth a look even if you don't intend to offer your services.

Galaxy Zoo

Or how about helping to classify galaxies? The University of Oxford and associated universities have a million galaxies that they need  to be identified as spiral or elliptical in form. Work through a short training programme on-line, take a test and if you pass you can start classifying. This is what the team leading the research have to say:

"The human brain is much better at recognizing patterns than a computer can ever be. Any computer program we write to sort our galaxies into categories would do a reasonable job, but it would also inevitably throw out the unusual, the weird and the wonderful. To rescue these interesting systems which have a story to tell, we need you." Check them out on GalaxyZoo.org.