Wikipedia ???

[Skyman55]

Hi

Just to say that I joined this forum for some engaging and enlighening discussion.
However, it appears that the vast majority of responses across this site consist of references to Wikipedia articles.

In particular, the responses on the Mandlebrot thread - I was hoping to read some discussion on fractal geometry,
recursive quadratics, Julia sets etc but no, just a load of Wiki URL's

This does beg the question - why does this site exist at all ?
Why not cut out the middle man and just go straight onto Wikipedia?.

I think that APOD is a totally excellent site and am a bit dissapointed that this closly associated site is in comparison, a bit of a let down

[owlice]

This site is what each of the forum members make of it. If you want to start a discussion, please do so!

If a good explanation exists elsewhere of something, such as in Wikipedia, it is efficient to simply link to that explanation rather than repeat the explanation here.

If you look around a bit more, you will find that this site offers much more than just links to Wikipedia, however:

• News is posted daily in the Communications Center -- it is a one-stop shop for what is going on in astronomy.
• Images submitted for APOD consideration appear in the Observation Deck.
• Astrophysicists who have written or who are looking for computer codes can use the Astrophysics Source Code Library.
• Students young and old can take two different courses here, one on introductory astronomy, and the other on very cool concepts in physics.
• Anyone can ask questions and get answers by visiting the Library.
• People can discuss each day's APOD on the Bridge.
• Ideas for improving both APOD and Asterisk are welcome in the Handbook.

And then there's banter, complaints about the weather, Shakespeare, sneezing suns, and so on, too.

Welcome to Asterisk!

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<The Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is a website provided by NASA and Michigan Technological University (MTU). According to the website, "Each day a different image or photograph of our universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer." The photograph is not necessarily taken on the exact day that it is displayed, and images are sometimes repeated. However, the pictures and descriptions are often related to current events in astronomy and space exploration. The text has several hyperlinks to more pictures and websites for more information. The images are either photographs, images taken at other wavelengths and displayed with false colors, video footage, animations or artist’s conceptions. Past images are stored in the APOD Archive, with the first image appearing on June 16, 1995. This initiative has received support from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and MTU. The images are sometimes authored by people or organizations outside of NASA, and therefore APOD images are often copyrighted, unlike many other NASA image galleries.

APOD was presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in 1996. Its practice of using hypertext was analyzed in a paper in 2000. It received a Scientific American Sci/Tech Web Award in 2001. In 2002, the website was featured in an interview with Nemiroff on CNN Saturday Morning News. In 2003, the two authors published a book titled The Universe: 365 Days from Harry N. Abrams, which is a collection of the best images from APOD as a hardcover "coffee table" style book. APOD was the Featured Collection in the November 2004 issue of D-Lib Magazine.>>

[Chris Peterson]

This does beg the question - why does this site exist at all ?
Why not cut out the middle man and just go straight onto Wikipedia?.

Wikipedia articles about scientific topics tend to be very good- accurate and written to be accessible to intelligent people who might not have strict scientific education. In addition, they tend to be well supported with references, encouraging further research.

Few posts here are simple links to Wikipedia articles. The way it usually works is that there is some explanation, and that may be accompanied by a link to one or more articles- and the articles themselves may not be the ones that a person asking questions would have immediately thought of.