Monday, October 26, 2009

Astronomy: Screensaver

By Colin Jones

Astronomy is the study of the universe. 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 films. These could be used to create your own photo site. For example, Saturn's moon Enceladus was the feature with "star billing" on November 5, 2008.

This image 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 picture of the day dating all the way back to June 16 of 1995. It was a 'what if' footage of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The footage is a computer generation. The most fascinating 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.

The entry for September 8th, 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 hiding 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 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 began on January 1st, 2001. NASA figured it was just better to just go with the flow and do it on both dates. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html shows mankind's view of the galaxy as it grew 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 web site, NASA.gov to see them.

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