Astronomy is the study of the cosmos. Some treat it as a serious science and others as an enjoyable hobby. That is why, whenever an astronomy picture of the day is offered to the public, people usually jump at the chance. There are plenty of astronomical pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting celestial objects to keep people enthralled.

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 reaches it. So you would need to 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 photo of the day dating all the way back to June 16th,’95. It was a ‘what if’ image of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The picture is a computer generation. The most noteworthy 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,’95 was an amazing photo 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 fantastic picture of our very symmetrical galaxy.

The astronomy picture of the day was the same on January 1st, 2000 and January 1st, 2001. The explanation why both dates displayed this picture is that the majority of people thought of the year 2000 as the first year of the third millennium.

However, the third millennium actually started on January 1st, 2001. NASA reasoned 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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