Astronomy: Wallpaper
October 17, 2009 by Colin Jones
Filed under Astronomy
Astronomy is the study of the cosmos. Some treat it as a serious science and others as an interesting pastime. 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 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.
This picture 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 strikes it. So you would need to wear sunglasses! This moon is so fascinating that Cassini will continue to fly by for more images later on in its mission.
NASA keeps an archive of all the astronomy photo of the day dating all the way back to June 16 of 1995. It was a ‘what if’ photo of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The photo is a computer generation. The most interesting 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.
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 generally invisible because of the dust masking it. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced that fantastic image of our very symmetrical galaxy.
The astronomy picture of the day was identical on January 1st, 2000 and January 1st, 2001, the reason being because both dates shared this photo is that the majority of people considered the year 2000 as the first year of the third millennium.
However, the third millennium actually began 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 displays mankind’s view of the solar system as it progressed from mere objects circling the Earth, all the way to the ‘Big Bang’ creating the universe as we see it today.
NASA has many 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 interested in astronomy, visit our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com
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