astronom-ntl.narod.ru — an educational site called "Astronomy and Physics at Your Fingertips," linked to the Nizhny Novgorod Technical Lyceum: the lyceum is named right in the homepage title — "::: Astronomy and Physics - at Your Fingertips. Nizhny Novgorod Technical Lyceum :::"[1]. The site lived on the free hosting service narod.ru and made it into our census through the nn.ru directory. The earliest snapshot of the homepage in the web archive is dated October 28, 2001[1]; the last year the archive caught the site alive was 2025[6].

What the site contained

The content was split into two halves — astronomy (addresses of the form /astro/) and physics (/phys/)[2]. The astronomy section was noticeably larger, and its set of topics followed the standard school curriculum: "Elements of the Celestial Sphere," "Coordinate Systems," "The Apparent Annual Motion of the Sun," "Configurations and Visibility Conditions of the Planets," "Kepler's Laws," "Measuring Distances in Astronomy," a large "Galaxies" block, and separate pages on Solar System bodies — Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, Pluto[2]. A separate section, /astro/diagram/, consisted of an introduction, theory, and biographies of Hertzsprung and Russell[2]. There was also a section on observation instruments: the design of a reflecting telescope, the design of a refracting telescope, Maksutov (meniscus) telescopes, chromatic aberration[2]. Adjoining it was a "Links to Friendly Sites" page[2].

Among the pages, one research paper stands out — "Characteristics of Stars" — its title appears in the listing eight times in a row[2]. The physics section was smaller: a section /phys/fa/ with files named archimed, zakon, sila, yslovie, zadachki, and three worked solutions, plus a "Friction Force" section (/phys/ftr/) with pages on the nature of friction, static friction, sliding, and rolling friction, and five sets of assignments v1–v5[2].

The directory description preserved in our census of Nizhny Novgorod sites promised "lecture notes, problems, olympiads, tests, and lab assignments" and, as the directory card put it, "almost ALL the information you may need to study these two sciences" — the capital letters and typos are in the original. Among the keywords on the first version of the homepage, alongside subject terms ("lab assignments," "technical lyceum ntl," "olympiads," "galaxies," "asteroyds," "kamets" [misspellings of "asteroids" and "comets"]), two words stand apart from the topic — monticora and mikhail aleksandrovich[1]; whose alias or name this is, the snapshot does not explain.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was listed in the nn.ru directory's rubricator; according to our Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, it carried a Counter.nn.ru score of 75.0. In the results of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, the site was not mentioned, and no votes for it were recorded[7]. It was not a notable name of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet — but it stayed online for twenty-four years.

The fate of the address

From 2011 onward the site did not change. The 2016, 2019, and 2020 snapshots match word for word, down to the last line[3][4][5]; the 2011 snapshot differs from them only in the ad block[2], and the May 2025 snapshot shows the same page with the same set of links[6]. What happened to the page between 2001 and 2011 cannot be seen from the snapshots examined.

The saved text of the homepage contains a list of the site's pages, and alongside the substantive titles it swept up service directories like _vti_cnf, unnamed addresses such as /astro/diagram/0-6_files/a.htm, and a page titled "Empty"; the title "Galaxies" repeats in the list sixty-one times, "Kepler's Laws" seven[2]. This list already looked this way in the earliest snapshot examined and stayed that way through 2025[2][6].

On top of the educational material, the hosting service displayed its own advertising. In 2011 the block was labeled "Yandex.Advertising on astronom-ntl.narod.ru," and the ads beneath it offered a computer desk, "All amendments from 2,500 rubles — Amendments to founding documents," and secondary lymphostasis — none of which had anything to do with astronomy[2]. In the 2016 and later snapshots the label shrank to "Advertising on astronom-ntl.narod.ru," and the ads themselves no longer made it into the archived text[3].

When checked in August 2026, the site at this address still responded. The last homepage snapshot we examined is dated May 28, 2025[6] — showing the same "Astronomy and Physics at Your Fingertips" as fourteen years earlier.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2011 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2016 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2019 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2020 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page, 2025 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)