Astronomy: 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 educational 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 plenty of astronomical pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting celestial objects to keep people looking.

NASA of course is a primary source for an astronomy picture of the day. This site NASA.gov shows a new image each and every day. There’s also another section that shows video footage. This could be used to create your own image site. Saturn’s moon Enceladus was featured on November 5, 2008.

The picture was taken by a passing spacecraft. It gets down to details the size of a bus. The ice on this moon reflects nearly 100% of all the light that hits it. Wear sunglasses. This moon is so unusual that Cassini will continue to fly by for more pictures 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’ image of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The footage is a computer generation. The most interesting feature is that the constellation Orion is visible twice. Even light from behind a neutron star is visible because the dense star bends the light all the way around it. This causes some double vision.

September 8, 1995 was an amazing image of the central part of the Milky Way galaxy taken by NASA’s COBE satellite. This area is usually invisible because of the dust masking it. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced that amazing footage 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 the majority of people considered the year 2000 as the first year of the third millennium.

However, the third millennium actually started on January 1st, 2001. NASA reasoned 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 thousands more days with their very own unique astronomy picture of the day. Visit their website, NASA.gov to see them.

Astronomy: pictures of the day are fascinating to vast numbers of people. If you are fascinated by astronomy, visit our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com