Picture of The Day

Astronomy is the study of the cosmos. 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 celestial objects to keep people enthralled.

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 movies. These could be used to create your own image site. Saturn's moon Enceladus was the 'star' feature on November 5, 2008.That 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 hits it. So you would need to wear sunglasses! This moon is so interesting that Cassini will continue to fly by for more footage later 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 image is a computer generation. The most fascinating 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 photo of the central part of the 'Milky Way' galaxy taken by NASA's COBE satellite. This area is generally not visible because of the dust obscuring it. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced that amazing photo of our very symmetrical galaxy.

The astronomy picture of the day was the same on January 1, 2000 and January 1, 2001. The reason both dates shared this picture is that most 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 better to just go with both. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html depicts man's view of the universe as it progressed from objects orbiting around the Earth all the way to the Big Bang creating the universe as we know it.

NASA has many more days with their very own unique astronomy picture of the day. Visit their web site, NASA.gov to see them.


by Astro