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Astronomy is the study of the universe. Some astrologers practice it as a serious science while for others it is an educational hobby. 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 thousands of astronomical pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting planets to keep people interested.

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.

This photo 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 reaches it. So you would need to wear sunglasses! This moon is so fascinating that Cassini will continue to fly by for more footage later on in its mission.

NASA keeps an archive of all the astronomy picture of the day dating all the way back to June 16th, 1995. It was a ‘what if’ image of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The picture is a computer generation. The most fascinating feature is that the constellation of Orion is visible twice. This is because even light from behind a neutron star is visible since the dense star bends the light around it. This causes some objects to be seen twice.

The entry for the 8th of September, 1995 was an amazing image of the internal section of the ‘Milky Way’ galaxy taken by NASA’s COBE satellite. This area is normally not visible 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 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 do it on both dates. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html displays man’s view of the solar system as it progressed from mere objects orbiting the Earth, all the way to the ‘Big Bang’ creating the universe as we know it today.

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

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

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