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Astronomy is the study of the universe. It is a serious science, but also an enjoyable hobby. Therefore, whenever an astronomy picture of the day is offered to people, they usually take it. There are plenty of such pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting objects out there to keep people looking.

Of course ,NASA is one of the primary sources for an astronomy picture of the day. This site, NASA.gov, shows a new picture each and every day. There is also a section that shows movies. These could be used to create your own photo site. For example, Saturn’s moon Enceladus was the feature with “star billing” on November 5, 2008.

The picture was taken by a passing rocket. 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 fascinating that Cassini will continue to fly by for more images later in its mission.

NASA maintains an archive of all the astronomy image 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 noteworthy feature is that the constellation of Orion is visible twice. Even light from behind a neutron star is visible because the dense star bends the light around it. This causes some objects to be seen twice.

The entry for September 8th, 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 picture of our very symmetrical galaxy.

The astronomy picture of the day was identical on January 1st, 2000 and January 1st, 2001, the reason being that both dates displayed this picture is that most people thought of 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 easier to just go with the flow and do it on both dates. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html depicts mankind’s view of the universe as it developed from mere objects circling the Earth, all the way to the ‘Big Bang’ creating the universe as we see it today.

NASA has a lot more days with their very own unique astronomy picture of the day. Visit their website, NASA.gov to see them.

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