Astronomy: Screensaver

Posted by Georgy | 10/17/2009

By Colin Jones

Astronomy is the study of outer space. It is a serious science, but also an enjoyable hobby. Therefore, whenever an astronomy picture of the day is offered to people, they usually take it. There are plenty of such pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting objects out there to keep people looking.

Of course ,NASA is one of the primary sources for an astronomy picture of the day. This site, NASA.gov, shows a new photo each and every day. There is also a section that shows videos. These could be used to create your own picture site. Saturn's moon Enceladus was the 'star' feature 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 pictures later on in its mission.

NASA keeps an archive of all the astronomy photo of the day dating all the way back to June 16th, 1995. It was a 'what if' footage of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The image 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.

September 8, 1995 was an amazing picture of the central part of the Milky Way galaxy taken by NASA's COBE satellite. This area is generally not visible because of the dust obscuring it. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced that fantastic photo 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 image is that the majority of people thought of the year 2000 to be 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 shows mankind's view of the solar system 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 thousands more days with their own astronomy picture of the day. Visit the web site, NASA.gov to see them.

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