Astronomy: Picture of the Day
Astronomy is the study of the universe. It is a serious science, but also a very pleasurable hobby. Therefore, whenever an astronomy picture of the day is offered to people, they usually grab it. There are plenty of such pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting objects out there to keep people looking.
Of course ,NASA is one of the primary sources for an astronomy picture of the day. This site, NASA.gov, shows a new picture each and every day. There is also a section that shows videos. These could be used to create your own image site. Saturn’s moon Enceladus was the ‘star’ feature on November 5, 2008.
This photo was taken by a passing spacecraft. It can reproduce details the size of a bus. The ice on this moon reflects as glare, nearly 100% of all the sun light that hits it. So you would need to wear sunglasses! This moon is so unusual that Cassini will continue to fly by for more pictures later on in its mission.
NASA retains an archive of all the astronomy footage of the day dating all the way back to June 16 of 1995. It was a ‘what if’ photo of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The image is a computer generation. The most interesting feature is that the constellation of Orion is visible twice. Even light from behind a neutron star is visible because the dense star bends the light around it. This causes some objects to be seen twice.
The entry for September 8th, 1995 was an amazing image of the central part of the ‘Milky Way’ galaxy taken by NASA’s COBE satellite. This area is usually not visible because of the dust obscuring it. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced that fantastic picture of our very symmetrical galaxy.
The astronomy picture of the day was identical on January 1st, 2000 and January 1st, 2001, the reason being that both dates displayed this image is that the majority of people considered the year 2000 as the first year of the third millennium.
However, the third millennium actually commenced on January 1st, 2001. NASA figured it was just better to just do it on both dates. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html displays man’s view of the universe as it progressed from mere objects orbiting the Earth, all the way to the ‘Big Bang’ creating the universe as we know it today.
NASA has many more days with their very own unique astronomy picture of the day. Visit their web site, NASA.gov to view them.