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Astronomy is the study of the universe. It is a serious science, but also a very pleasurable hobby. Therefore, whenever an astronomy picture of the day is offered to people, they usually accept 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 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 rocket. 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 maintains an archive of all the astronomy footage of the day dating all the way back to June 16 of’95. It was a ‘what if’ picture of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The image is a computer generation. The most interesting feature is that the constellation Orion is visible twice. Even light from behind a neutron star is visible because the dense star bends the light all the way around it. This causes some double vision.

September 8,’95 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 image 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 photo is that most people considered the year 2000 as the first year of the third millennium.

However, the third millennium actually commenced 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 depicts mankind’s view of the universe 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 a lot more days with their own astronomy picture of the day. Visit the web site, NASA.gov to see them.

Astronomy: pictures of the day are fascinating to huge numbers of people. If you are fascinated by astronomy, go along to our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory

How many facts are there to be known or learned about all the objects and phenomenon in our entire universe? Just think: there are about 1 x 10 ^22 stars in the universe, that’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars; then there are many of those stars that have planets in orbit around them. Then consider the moons that orbit those planets and the comets and asteroids, the galaxies these stars form, the nebulae and black holes and everything else that’s out there. The amount of information and data is really quite mind-boggling. This article definitely will not contain every fact about astronomy, but they are very interesting facts nevertheless.

Let’s take a look at a small subset of astronomy: “the brightest stars as seen from Earth”. That’s discounting the Sun which is about 250,000 times closer than the next nearest star. It’s so bright that when the sky is viewed from the Earth, it washes out all the other stars in the sky during a phenomenon called daylight.

Remember that according to the scale for the magnitudes given, lower numbers are brighter. Our Sun would be about -26.73, while the full moon is -12.6. So, with that in mind, here are the top 5:

#5 is Vega, which is in Lyra, and which means ‘falling eagle’ in Arabic. It’s about 25 light years away from the Earth, with a magnitude of 0.04.

NB: when thinking about this astronomical information, please just bear in mind that the ‘brightest from the Earth’ doesn’t mean ‘largest’ or ‘brightest’. The Sun is not the largest or brightest star in the universe or even the galaxy by any means, but it seems to be so bright to us because we are near to it compared to the other stars.

#4 Rigel Centaurus – a very bright, bluish-white supergiant star in the constellation Orion. It is a binary star, with an average apparent magnitude of 0.12. It’s scientific name is Beta Orionis. ‘Rigel Centaurus’ is Arabic for ‘the foot of the centaur’. It’s about four light years from Earth.

#3 is Arcturus. The translates as ‘guardian of the bear’ from the Greek. This star is about 37 light years away from us. It is situated in the constellation of Bootes, close to The Great Bear. It has a magnitude of 0.00

#2 Canopus. Of these top five, Canopus, the Greek name for the pilot of the vessel Argo made famous in the stories about Jason and the Argonauts, is the brightest. But it’s 313 light years from Earth, so it’s just second on this list as seen from Earth. It has a magnitude of -.62 as seen from this planet.

#1 is Sirius, meaning ’scorching’ in Greek. It’s also called the ‘Dog Star’ because it is the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major (‘The Big Dog’). It’s only 9 light years from Earth. That’s second closest of these top five. But from Earth it has a magnitude of -1.44. That makes it easily the brightest star as seen in the night sky.

These few data don’t even scratch the surface of subject of astronomy but it’s something for you to think about the next time you gaze up into the night sky.