Astronomy is the study of the universe. Some astrologers practice it as a serious science while for others it is an interesting pastime. For this reason, whenever an astronomy picture of the day is offered to the general public, people usually jump at the chance of looking at it. There are many of astronomical pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting planets to keep people interested.
Of course ,NASA is one of the primary sources for an astronomy picture of the day. This site, NASA.gov, shows a new photo each and every day. There is also a section that shows videos. These could be used to create your own image site. For example, Saturn’s moon Enceladus was the feature with “star billing” on November 5, 2008.
This photo was taken by a passing rocket. 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 strikes it. So you would need to wear sunglasses! This moon is so fascinating that Cassini will continue to fly by for more pictures later on in its mission.
NASA maintains 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’ footage of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The picture is a computer generation. The most interesting feature is that the constellation Orion is visible twice. Even light from behind a neutron star is visible because the dense star bends the light all the way around it. This causes some double vision.
The entry for September 8th, 1995 was an amazing picture of the central part of the ‘Milky Way’ galaxy taken by NASA’s COBE satellite. This area is generally invisible because of the dust masking it. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced that fantastic photo of our very symmetrical galaxy.
The astronomy picture of the day was identical on January 1st, 2000 and January 1st, 2001, the reason being because both dates displayed this picture is that most people thought of the year 2000 to be the first year of the third millennium.
However, the third millennium actually began on January 1st, 2001. NASA figured it was just better to just do it on both dates. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html shows 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 own astronomy picture of the day. Visit the web site, NASA.gov to see them.
Astronomy: pictures of the day are fascinating to vast numbers of people. If you are interested in astronomy, visit our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com You are welcome to reprint this article – but get your own unique content version here.
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