Astronomy is the study of the galaxies. Some astrologers practice it as a serious science while for others it is an educational pastime. 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 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.

This 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 hits it. So you would need to wear sunglasses! This moon is so fascinating that Cassini will continue to fly by for more footage later on in its mission.

NASA retains an archive of all the astronomy image of the day dating all the way back to June 16th, 1995. It was a ‘what if’ photo of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The image is a computer generation. The most fascinating 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 normally invisible because of the dust obscuring it. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced that fantastic footage 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 shared 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 better to just go with the flow and do it on both dates. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html displays 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 thousands 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 This and other unique content ” articles are available with free reprint rights.