Examining objects and phenomena in space such as nebulae, galaxies and comets is Astronomy. Some people do it for a living, others just to pass the time. That’s why when a web site or magazine offers an astronomy picture of the day it’s likely to garner a great deal of attention. There are plenty of such pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting objects out there to keep people looking.
The first place to look for and astronomy picture of the day is NASA’s website. There’s a new image there every day. The multimedia section shows both images and videos. This could be used to create your own image site. November 5, 2008 showed a close view of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The photo was taken by a passing spacecraft. The image is crisp enough to see a small bus, if there were one on the moon. The ice on this moon reflects nearly 100% of all the light that hits it. Talk about bright. Cassini is scheduled for more flybys during its mission.
NASA’s images of the day go all the way back to June 16, 1995. That image was of Earth as if it had the density of a neutron star. Of course the image is a computer simulation. The most interesting feature is that the constellation Orion is visible twice. That’s because a neutron star is dense enough to bend light from behind it to the front of it. That’s why some objects are seen twice.
September 8, 1995 was an amazing image of the central part of the Milky Way galaxy taken by NASA’s COBE satellite. Due to space dust this would normally not be visible to the naked eye or to a telescope. But COBE’s infrared imaging captured this amazing image.
The astronomy picture of the day was the same on January 1, 2000 and January 1, 2001. That’s because most people believe the year 2000 was the first year of the new millennium. In reality January 1, 2001 was the beginning of millennium #3. Instead of arguing NASA used both dates. The image found at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html shows the progression of our picture of the universe from orbs that rotate around the Earth all the way to the big bang event creating an ever expanding cosmos.
NASA has a lot more days with their own astronomy picture of the day. You’ll find them on NASA’s website.
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