by The Meal » Wed Jan 05, 2005 2:31 pm
MrDon wrote:The obvious first appeal of the APOD site is the picture - but I believe the real value is the hyperlink text. I very much appreciate the time that the APOD authors put into the text. The hyperlinks have taken me to some wonderful side trips that are fascinating, beautiful, intriguing and many times confusing for this simple lay person. However, I love trying to follow along and glean additional knowledge.
The picture is just the icing on the cake.
Personally I can't decide between which of the two is more valuable. I suppose on some days (such as when we get an artist's vision for an astronomical sight) the text is the clear winner, while on other days the breathtaking photo giving a proper sense of awe in the universe is the star of the show.
My father still lives back in rural Michigan, and this is the time of year in which our conversations tend to revolve around discussions of the National Hockey League (which is currently inactive due to a dispute between the players and owners with regards to their bargain agreement). With the lack of the NHL, it's become more and more that the APOD is our link to each other. He's a retired foreman for a county Road Commission that managed to graduate from High School in 1956. I'm an active analyist and experimentation expert ("lab monkey") for a prominent hard disk drive manufacturer that completed his Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 2000. Clearly the two of us see the various APODs in very different light, and yet there's a commonality ingrained in the photographs that speaks to us as curious humans of any background. I doubt he finds the scientific (or humorous!) hyperlinks nearly as entertaining as I, but he's sending me links to the APODs more often than I'm sending links to him (probably because he has a 2-time-zone advantage over me and my morning websurfing).
To toss out a question that likely will never been seen by the appropriate authorities, after seeing
Today's APOD, I became curious as to whom has had the most original submissions published as APODs.
Jimmy Westlake has had quite a few magnificent shots (DSOs, comets, the transit of Venus IIRC, etc) in recent months (many of which have become temporary desktop backgrounds for yours truly), and purely due to his APOD exposure I've become aware of his amazing photography. Are there even more popular contributors over the storied history of the APOD?
~Neal
[quote="MrDon"]The obvious first appeal of the APOD site is the picture - but I believe the real value is the hyperlink text. I very much appreciate the time that the APOD authors put into the text. The hyperlinks have taken me to some wonderful side trips that are fascinating, beautiful, intriguing and many times confusing for this simple lay person. However, I love trying to follow along and glean additional knowledge.
The picture is just the icing on the cake.[/quote]
Personally I can't decide between which of the two is more valuable. I suppose on some days (such as when we get an artist's vision for an astronomical sight) the text is the clear winner, while on other days the breathtaking photo giving a proper sense of awe in the universe is the star of the show.
My father still lives back in rural Michigan, and this is the time of year in which our conversations tend to revolve around discussions of the National Hockey League (which is currently inactive due to a dispute between the players and owners with regards to their bargain agreement). With the lack of the NHL, it's become more and more that the APOD is our link to each other. He's a retired foreman for a county Road Commission that managed to graduate from High School in 1956. I'm an active analyist and experimentation expert ("lab monkey") for a prominent hard disk drive manufacturer that completed his Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 2000. Clearly the two of us see the various APODs in very different light, and yet there's a commonality ingrained in the photographs that speaks to us as curious humans of any background. I doubt he finds the scientific (or humorous!) hyperlinks nearly as entertaining as I, but he's sending me links to the APODs more often than I'm sending links to him (probably because he has a 2-time-zone advantage over me and my morning websurfing).
To toss out a question that likely will never been seen by the appropriate authorities, after seeing [url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050105.html]Today's APOD[/url], I became curious as to whom has had the most original submissions published as APODs. [url=http://faculty.coloradomtn.edu/jwestlake/]Jimmy Westlake[/url] has had quite a few magnificent shots (DSOs, comets, the transit of Venus IIRC, etc) in recent months (many of which have become temporary desktop backgrounds for yours truly), and purely due to his APOD exposure I've become aware of his amazing photography. Are there even more popular contributors over the storied history of the APOD?
~Neal