The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: February 15, 2009

Official News page 9


ON THE WEB: NASA ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY ARCHIVE

by Jezz

A big "thank you!" goes out to Zand this week for bringing us an incredible collection of photographs from NASA. Not only are the pictures fantastic, but each photo in the collection comes with an explanation written by a professional astronomer, so we can understand exactly what we are seeing. Zand came across the site after following a link while looking at pictures from the Hubble Telescope.

If we are ever able to have pictures for our space locations, these photos are sure to provide some inspiration. Take a look at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html.

I viewed some of the pictures and amongst my favorites were:

2009 January 11: In the Shadow of Saturn
2008 December 29: NGC 1569: Starburst in a Dwarf Irregular Galaxy
2008 December 11: At the Center of the Milky Way
2008 December 01: Massive Stars Resolved in the Carina Nebula
2008 November 27: Galaxies in the River
2008 November 19: Unusual Auroras Over Saturns North Pole
2008 November 03: A Spectacular Rayed Crater on Mercury
2008 September 15: SN 1006: A Supernova Ribbon from Hubble
2008 December 22: Labtayt Sulci on Saturns Enceladus
2008 December 25: Fox Fur, a Unicorn, and a Christmas Tree
2008 December 17: The Dumbbells
2008 October 14: An Enceladus Tiger Stripe from Cassini

For any of you who might be amateur photographers out there, there is one picture that was taken with the very lowest tech camera you can imagine:

Suspension Bridge Solargraph

To quote the explanation given "the remarkable image was recorded with a simple pinhole camera made from a drink can lined with a piece of photographic paper." The exposure time was 6 months and the photo tracks the path of the Sun from one vantage point over that time period.

This is a truly remarkable collection of photographs. Great job, Zand!


Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page