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

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 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 picture 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 picture 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.

The entry for September 8th, 1995 was an amazing picture of the central part of the ‘Milky Way’ galaxy taken by NASA’s COBE satellite. This area is normally invisible because of the dust masking it. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced that fantastic 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 image is that most people considered the year 2000 as the first year of the third millennium.

However, the third millennium actually started on January 1st, 2001. NASA figured it was just easier to just do it on both dates. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html displays man’s view of the universe 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 thousands more days with their own astronomy picture of the day. Visit the web site, NASA.gov to see them.

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