Posts Tagged ‘nasa astronomy picture of the day’
Astronomy Picture Of The Day
July 24th, 2009
Astronomy is a study of outer space. It can be a serious science, but also a fun hobby. That’s why when a web site or magazine offers an astronomy picture of the day archive, 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. Their web site, nasa.gov, presents a new photo every day. It also has a multimedia center with video and images. These could be great sources for a person to create their own site that offers a new image each day. 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 so detailed that features about the size of a bus are viewable. One interesting feature of the ice on Enceladus is that it reflects 99% of the light that falls onto it. Talk about snow blind. The moon is so interesting that Cassini will continue to fly by for more images later in its mission.
NASA’s images of the day go all the way back to June 16, 1995. It was a what if image of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The image is a computer generation. One interesting element is that the constellation Orion in his visible twice. That’s because a neutron star is dense enough to bend light from behind it to the front of it. This causes some double vision.
September 8, 1995 brought a very interesting image of the central part of our own Milky Way galaxy from the NASA COBE Satellite. This image would normally not be visible because the dust in the galaxy obscures it in the visible spectrum. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced the amazing image of our very symmetrical galaxy.
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. NASA decided to just go with both. The image found at apod.nasa.gov 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. Visit the web site, NASA.gov, to see them.
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