Easy Astronomy Blog

Examining objects and phenomena in space such as nebulae, galaxies and comets is Astronomy. Some people do it for a living, others just to pass the time. Thus whenever an astronomy picture of the day is offered to people, they grab it. There are plenty of such pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting objects out there to keep people looking.

NASA is a great source to find and astronomy picture of the day. There’s a new image there every day. There’s also another section that shows videos and images. This could be an excellent source for images and videos for your own daily updated site. November 5, 2008 showed a close view of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The photo was taken by a passing spacecraft. The image is crisp enough to see a small bus, if there were one on the moon. One interesting characteristic of the ice on Enceladus is that it reflects 99% of the light that falls onto it. Talk about snow blind. The plan is that Cassini will take more images of this moon later in its mission.

June 16, 1995 the first astronomy photo of the day NASA was online. It was a what if image of the Earth posing as a neutron star. This photo was created by the computer. 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. That’s why some objects are seen twice.

September 8, 1995 was an amazing image of the central part of the Milky Way galaxy taken by NASA’s COBE satellite. This area is normally invisible because of the dust obscuring it. But COBE’s infrared imaging captured this amazing image.

The astronomy picture of the day was the same on January 1, 2000 and January 1, 2001. That’s because most people conceive the year 2000 was the first year of the new millennium. However the third millennium actually began on January 1, 2001. Instead of arguing NASA used both dates. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html shows man’s view of the universe as it progressed from orbs that orbit around the Earth all the way to the Big Bang creating the universe as we know it.

It would be very hard to see each and every astronomy picture of the day. You’ll find them on NASA’s