by ruprecht147 » Wed Aug 25, 2010 7:04 pm
So many beauties I can barely make a choice. I do try to avoid voting for an image just because it's gorgeous, but in the case of the Iris Nebula -- yes, we've seen many, many previous versions of that one! -- I just couldn't help myself. It's got to be among the finest renditions I've seen. So I gave it a click.
What are other people's philosophies for picking images? For me visual appeal is always first, but I also give points to novelty and especially to the wow factor. And then there's the didactic angle -- one of the many purposes of these images is to educate us, to expand our horizons, to give us new perspectives, to teach us new ways of thinking.
The best APODs seduce us into enlightenment.
And in fact my brain got into such a ferment over this gallery of wonders that I FORGOT TO VOTE FOR THREE! I picked only two, and they were both beauties -- I voted for the noctilucent clouds as well as the Iris Nebula. My third pick would have been NGC 6960, another very tasty piece of eye candy. Runners up were Jupiter and NGC 7000.
Requests for future APODs -- in clicking through the various links above, I saw a picture of Venus in false color by Fabio Carvalho. That one meets most of my criteria -- beauty, novelty, education (though not necessarily a wow). So I strongly recommend that one for a future poll.
And here's an object I don't think I've ever seen in APOD -- and it's a very significant astronomical target indeed: the Hyades Cluster, the nearest rich open cluster in our local neighborhood. Here's my request for the most gorgeous possible picture of the Hyades.
So many beauties I can barely make a choice. I do try to avoid voting for an image just because it's gorgeous, but in the case of the Iris Nebula -- yes, we've seen many, many previous versions of that one! -- I just couldn't help myself. It's got to be among the finest renditions I've seen. So I gave it a click.
What are other people's philosophies for picking images? For me visual appeal is always first, but I also give points to novelty and especially to the wow factor. And then there's the didactic angle -- one of the many purposes of these images is to educate us, to expand our horizons, to give us new perspectives, to teach us new ways of thinking.
The best APODs seduce us into enlightenment.
And in fact my brain got into such a ferment over this gallery of wonders that I FORGOT TO VOTE FOR THREE! I picked only two, and they were both beauties -- I voted for the noctilucent clouds as well as the Iris Nebula. My third pick would have been NGC 6960, another very tasty piece of eye candy. Runners up were Jupiter and NGC 7000.
Requests for future APODs -- in clicking through the various links above, I saw a picture of Venus in false color by Fabio Carvalho. That one meets most of my criteria -- beauty, novelty, education (though not necessarily a wow). So I strongly recommend that one for a future poll.
And here's an object I don't think I've ever seen in APOD -- and it's a very significant astronomical target indeed: the Hyades Cluster, the nearest rich open cluster in our local neighborhood. Here's my request for the most gorgeous possible picture of the Hyades.