It is an unending experience. I have a deep connection to this site as the person who introduced me to it passed away earlier this year. He was one of the first people I ever came to know online.

I like the variation of the type of pictures... today it's an impressionist painting! There's an Android App (I presume there's an IPhone one as well) that updates your background with the latest APOTD. It's virtually the first thing I check each morning.

Yes it is very special. They must have an enorous supply of very high quality pictures since I never ceased to be amazed at the quality.

There is a AAPOD site but it is not in the same class.

24.9.2010

Another really good picture today.

28.9.2010

Interesting picture.

29.9.2010

Now that is really wow picture. How pleased would you be with that if you had taken it?

6.10.2010

This picture really is wow.

20.10.2010

Very nice.

24.10.2010

A nice little run around?

My own astronomy picture of the day is the beautiful NGC 1232 spiral galaxy is the constellation of Eridanus.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...a/NGC1232B.jpg

Very pretty it is too.

Indeed it is, HenryGarten, and unlike our own Milky Way Galaxy, it's a proper spiral galaxy!

...and today's official Astronomy Picture of the Day is the Elephant's Trunk Nebula http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1011...Geissinger.jpg in the constellation of Cepheus.

However, I think I prefer the Swirl Galaxy SMM J2135-0102 http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecac...elephotocr.jpg which is 10 billion years light years away and hence we see it as it was 10 billion years ago or or just 3 billion years or so after the Big Bang.

Interestingly, this young galaxy has a very high rate of star formation when compared with today's later generation galaxies such as our own Milky Way. More here http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...star_formation.

Just unbelievable. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wo-OW! as a certain Miss Bush would have once said. 'The world' may not always be beautiful, but the universe is never anything less.

15.11.2010

A real wow picture today. How wonderful would it be to be there?

...and now, for a change, it's yesterday's astronomy picture of the day because it's so much better than today's!

In this case, we have an excellent photo of Stephan's Quintet which is a compact group of close galaxies 40 milion light years away - see here http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap101120.html. It must be one awesome night sky on any planet in any one of those galaxies!

What an amazing pic!

How have I missed this thread before.

Brilliant!

24.11.2010

This one is really wow wow wow.

I'd like to post a link to yesterday's picture here http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101203.html which is of the M33 galaxy. Relatively speaking, it is a close galactic neighbour and you can see why it's also called the Pinwheel Galaxy.

Today's picture here http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101204.html is an interesting terrestrial shot from Utah and it looks quite festive but in reality the white ground cover is, in fact, salt crystals.

AKA the Triangulum galaxy because it's in the small constellation of the same name, and it's the next-nearest spiral galaxy after the Andromeda galaxy.

The Andromeda galaxy is generally regarded as being the most distant object that is visible to the naked-eye (about 2½ million light-years away)
However, that is wrong - I've seen M33 (about 3 million light-years) by naked-eye one particularly clear night, from a very dark rural site near the Eng-Scot border.

...and today's picture is the might hunter Orion which is now easily visible in the northern skies: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101226.html. That particular picture was taken in Co. Donegal, Ireland.

There are quite a few items of interest in this constellation as can be seen in this article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28constellation%29 such as the Horsehead Nebula which really does look like a horse's head - http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en...w=1024&bih=555.

That said, my favourite just has to be the Flame Nebula which can be seen here http://www.google.co.uk/images?um=1&...=&oq=&gs_rfai=.

Today's picture is of yesterday's partial solar eclipse and you can see the Moon obscuring part of the Sun here http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110105.html. Unfortunately, it was cloudy across a lot of the UK so many people did not get to see that event except on TV. If you look closely at that picture, you can see a couple of sunspot groups too.

I must also go back a few days to January 1st's picture which is of the glorious Fireworks Galaxy here http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110101.html and here http://www.caelumobservatory.com/gallery/n6946.shtml. It really does look like a catherine wheel http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en...=&oq=&gs_rfai= in the sky and it is beautiful.

I have three pictures for today.

The first is from the APOD website and it's a picture of an alien cloud formation http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html in California. It looks like someting from a Steven Spielberg movie!

The second is a lenticular cloud here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pict...1.html?image=4 which was seen in Spain and they just look so much like flying saucers.

Finally, we have this detailed image of the NGC 2841 spiral galaxy in Ursa Major http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pict...uary-2011.html. That Hubble Space Telescope is so amazing because it can pick out individual features in a galaxy that's 46 million light-years away.

in post 222,the one of the solar eclipse,the top sun spot is the ISS...wow

Not planets obviously, but the Northern Lights

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...3_1753907c.jpg

http://www.selfcateringshetland.co.u...hernlights.jpg