I thought you might be especially interested in this site: planetarybiology.com
You can download a PDF of the good stuff here: astronomical_circumstances_06.pdf

The site belongs to a biologist out in California named Tom Morris, who teaches at Fullerton College. We've corresponded a bit in the past and have very similar interests, and his "Astronomical Circumstances" chapter is a gold mine of things that are useful to know about what makes a planet habitable. He's collected stuff from hundreds of different sources and synthesized it into a nice whole. Anybody who can handle high school algebra can make use of the equations to do some solid world-building. All you need is a pocket calculator or a spreadsheet and away you go.

If you want to know more about the stars in the solar neighborhood, check out solstation.com. Here you can find descriptions of notable nearby stars, plus download 3D starmaps based on the Gliese Nearby Star catalog, and an app to view them with.

For in-depth data on many stars in both the Gliese and Hipparcos catalogs, try the Internet Stellar Database: stellar-database.com. No graphics, but the physical data for the stars is more complete and a little more up to date than Sol Station.

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