Astronomy Picture of the
Day
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.
NASA of course is a primary source for
an astronomy picture of the day. There's a new image
there every day. The multimedia section shows both images
and videos. This could be an excellent source for images
and videos for your own daily updated site. On November
5, 2008, NASA's picture of the day was a close view of Saturn's
moon, Enceladus. It was taken by the Cassini space craft
as it passed about 1,700 kilometers from the surface. The
image is crisp enough to see a small bus, if there were one on
the moon. the ice on this moon is pretty unique it
reflects 99% of the light that strikes it. Wear
sunglasses. Cassini is scheduled for more flybys during
its mission.
NASA maintains an archive of all the
astronomy photos of the day dating all the way back to June 16
of 1995. That image was of Earth as if it had the density
of a neutron star. This photo was created by the
computer. 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. This distortion causes double images of
some objects.
September 8, 1995 was an amazing image
of the central part of the Milky Way galaxy taken by NASA's
COBE satellite. This image would normally not be visible
because the dust in the galaxy obscures it in the visible
spectrum. But COBE's infrared imaging captured this
amazing image.
January 1 in 2000 and 2001 had the
very same astronomy picture of the day. It's due to the
fact that many people think of the year 2000 as the first day
of the third millennium. In reality January 1, 2001 was
the beginning of millennium #3. NASA figured it was
better to just go with both. 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. Go to NASA's website
for more.
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