Astronomy: Picture of the Day

By Colin Jones

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 accept 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 image each and every day. There is also a section that shows films. These could be used to create your own image site. Saturn's moon Enceladus was the 'star' feature on November 5, 2008.

That image 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 fascinating that Cassini will continue to fly by for more photos later in its mission.

NASA maintains an archive of all the astronomy photo of the day dating all the way back to June 16th,'95. It was a 'what if' image of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The photo is a computer generation. The most interesting feature is that the constellation of Orion is visible twice. This is because even light from behind a neutron star is visible since the dense star bends the light around it. This causes some objects to be seen twice.

September 8,'95 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 1st, 2000 and January 1st, 2001. The explanation why both dates displayed this picture is that most people thought of 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 depicts 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. - 30452

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