Astronomy: Wallpaper

Astronomy is the study of the universe. Some astrologers practice it as a serious science while for others it is an enjoyable 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 many of astronomical pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting celestial objects to keep people interested.

Of course ,NASA is one of the primary sources for an astronomy picture of the day. This site, NASA.gov, shows a new picture each and every day. There is also a section that shows videos. 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.

The picture was taken by a passing rocket. It gets down to details the size of a bus. The ice on this moon reflects nearly 100% of all the light that hits it. Wear sunglasses. This moon is so fascinating that Cassini will continue to fly by for more images later in its mission.

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

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 normally invisible because of the dust obscuring it. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced that fantastic picture 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 most people considered the year 2000 to be the first year of the third millennium.

However, the third millennium actually commenced on January 1st, 2001. NASA reasoned it was better to just go with both. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html depicts man’s view of the universe as it progressed from objects orbiting around the Earth all the way to the Big Bang creating the universe as we know it.

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 huge numbers of people. If you are fascinated by astronomy, visit our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com