IRC Chat - Shareware / Freeware Software

mIRC (available for Win '95 / Win '98 / Win NT / Win 2000 / Win ME / Win XP)

For the Macintosh users, the software available is:
ChatNet
Ircle

Time Service Department  (Inside the U.S.A. and Netscape Only)

Starlink IRC Net only has a few servers.
5 in the U.S.A.
2 in Canada
1 in the U.K.
- then "join" - #sciastro chat channel - people here, usually every night (USA time)

#sciastro, the amateur astronomer's IRC channel, was founded in November 1996 by Chris Sheehan. It was designed to provide amateur astronomers at all levels of interest a place to chat about their hobby. The channel, housed on the friendly Starlink IRC Network, is open 24 hours per day, with channel OPs logged on for much of that time. So pull up a chair and join us! The only requirement is interest.

One users nickname is PORTIA aka: Susan Carroll
Susan Carroll's Home Page

We talk about ccd's - astronomy - sports - anything ;-)

Another astronomy network worldwide. (English only is spoken here) Personally, I've chatted with people from all over the world! We talk about anything .... ;-)



IRCnet's Home Page

Here are a few IRCnet servers : - (6667 is a port number)

irc1.us.ircnet.net:6667 - then /join #astronomy channel (only American server - on this network)
irc.uni-stuttgart.de:6667 - then /join #astronomy channel
irc.funet.fi:6667 - then /join #astronomy channel

After you connected to the IRCnet server - /join #astronomy
(On Sundays at 20:00 UT (1:00pm PDT (West Coast time)
or 4:00pm EDT (East Coast time) usually a meeting here, on the IRCnet servers:)

Other astronomy channels on this network are: #astronomie.de (German) - #astrotreff.de (German) - #astronomie-fr (French) to name a few.

Newsgroups

A few readers listed here:
Forte News Reader
News Express Reader
Plus copies of Netscape, Microsoft Outlook Express or Outlook are news group readers too.


sci.astro.amateur   Newsgroup has discussion and information geared towards amateur astronomy
sci.astro.xxxxxxxx Lots of newsgroups - search the newsgroups