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.