Astronomy is the study of the galaxies. Some astrologers practice it as a serious science while for others it is an interesting 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 many of astronomical pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting moons etc 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.
That footage was taken by a passing spacecraft. 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 strikes it. So you would need to wear sunglasses! This moon is so interesting that Cassini will continue to fly by for more photos 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’ picture 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 picture 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 hiding 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 1, 2000 and January 1, 2001. The reason both dates shared this image is that most people considered the year 2000 as the first year of the third millennium.
However, the third millennium actually began on January 1st, 2001. NASA figured it was just better to just go with the flow and do it on both dates. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html depicts mankind’s view of the galaxy as it progressed from mere objects circling the Earth, all the way to the ‘Big Bang’ creating the universe as we see it today.
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