Starship Asterisk*

The 2014 APOD fan-assembled calendar is now available for download and printing in PDF format (31.5 MB) from the link at the bottom of this post. Note there is a smaller file (4.5 MB) if you wish to preview the calendar.

Designed for 8.5" x 11" paper (landscape orientation), the calendar is easily printable. For best printed results, print it double-sided in color on bright white light card stock or 24-lb paper with a spiral or comb (GBC) binding and punch a hole for hanging; many local printing shops (Staples, Kinkos, etc.) offer binding services. Containing recent APOD images, the calendar makes a great inexpensive holiday present!

Since the calendar is in PDF, it can be viewed on devices such as the Kindle and many e-readers.

The 2014 calendar has the following improvements over last year's:

• Moon phases in both northern and southern hemisphere editions
• Annotations for eclipses, meteor showers peaks, conjunctions, oppositions, solstices, equinoxes, perihelion and aphelion
• APOD explanations for each image
• Previous year's APODs as watermarks in each calendar day cell
• All images are hyperlinks to their respective APOD pages when viewing the calendar digitally
• 2015 & 2016 mini calendars on the last two pages

Please note that all dates/times are UTC so some moon phases may seem as if they are one day off. Also please remember that best viewing of meteor showers may not be on the peak nights due to moonlight.

Thanks to all who offered suggestions for improvement and/or images to include and those who QA'ed the almost-final version. The calendar is much better after your input (and all remaining errors are entirely our fault).

The last page of the PDF appears upside-down; this is deliberate. When printed, this page serves as the back cover of the calendar and allows one to see thumbnails of all the images in the calendar in the correct orientation (in relation to the front cover).

Happy holidays!

Calendar download links:

If you are from the northern hemisphere, you will want this version:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1312/AP ... rthern.pdf
Or this one, which has larger calendar dates:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1312/AP ... rthern.pdf

If you are from the southern hemisphere, you will want this one:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1312/AP ... uthern.pdf

A smaller file for preview purposes is here. Please do not print it. It will look bad and baby kittens and puppies will cry if you print this one.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1312/AP ... REVIEW.pdf

... If you are from the southern hemisphere, you will want this one: A smaller file for preview purposes is here. Please do not print it. It will look bad and baby kittens and puppies will cry if you print this one. [/hide]

Nice try, gecko, but you got found out! Thanks, though! ~ Owl

Beautiful. Thank you Starship crew (especially you, owlice).

I may be in the minority of the minority of people below the Equator, but I prefer the Northern version of the calendar. When I look at symbols for moon phase, I automatically assume North is up.

(April, August and November are my favourites.)

Nitpicker, geckzilla did the final version of the calendar.

On behalf of the Starship crew, thanks for your kind words, Nitpicker!

owlice wrote:Nitpicker, geckzilla did the final version of the calendar.

Not wanting to detract from the fine finishing touches by geckzilla, but the early versions must be where the tough decisions are made.

Nitpicker wrote:

owlice wrote:Nitpicker, geckzilla did the final version of the calendar.

Not wanting to detract from the fine finishing touches by geckzilla, but the early versions must be where the tough decisions are made.

There are tough decisions throughout, and a lot of -- surely you can appreciate this! -- nitpicky detail work, and the closer one gets to the deadline, the more of it there seems to be! And geckzilla didn't do just fine finishing touches; she completely rebuilt the calendar!

It's a fun project to work on, though, even with tough decisions and nitpicky detail work!

Note: I just updated the three files with some higher resolution images I was unaware were available for Fred's Perseids and Ute's iridescent clouds. I hope no one printed them already.

The fact that this is free is astounding! Thank you so much for all the great information and images!

Thanks for all your work APOD Crew ~~ now I have to go find a decent printer .....

Wow. Wonderful. Thank you for the calendar.

Thanks so much for a great calendar. I am a long-time NASA employee and old astronomy buff who views APOD daily. There are some commercial astronomy and space calendars available in the marketplace by some well-know publishers (anyone who is a space and astronomy enthusiest knows who I mean), but this is by far a superior product. I also love the hyperlinks to original pics, even the small daily watermark images. Of course once you print it, they go away; so I am going to keep the pdf on my desktop so I can use it from time to time. My appreciation to the whole crew that produced this.

Thanks for the calendar; last year's is hanging on the wall next to me. Just a detail--the dates on last year's were too small for me to read from more than about a foot away. Is it too late too make them a little larger?

For the poster who wanted a decent printer, try your local Kinko's or Staples. They pjrinted and bound mine last year for a reasonable charge.

Here's one with large numbers. Hopefully I didn't go too far and make them too large.

(You'll still have to put on the reading glasses for the descriptions, though. If I make the type larger it forces me to overlap and cut off the beautiful photos.)

ETA: This link has been added to the first post...[/hide]

Great effort, and it looks wonderful!
I understand copying the descriptions as they were published, but some details do not stand the test of time.

APOD_Calendar_2014_Northern.pdf wrote:Hubble Floats Free
[...] A future large telescope for space, the James Webb Space Telescope is currently planned for launch in 2014. ap090525.html

2014 may have been the schedule in 2009, but we know now that it will be at least 2018:

www.jwst.nasa.gov wrote:The James Webb Space Telescope is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope. The project is working to a 2018 launch date.

Always a possibility with old APOD texts. Still, we probably should have updated it for the calendar. I'll make sure to have you look it over for us next year, Case.

I have been a fan of APOD for long time. This years calendar is phenomenal. This one is proudly being displayed in my office for next year. Thanks very much guys for the hard work.

A suggestion for future calendars, and I have no idea how difficult this would be, if even possible: A note on each day we have a significant NASA event, like project completions, launches, landings, flybys, etc.

geckzilla wrote:Always a possibility with old APOD texts. Still, we probably should have updated it for the calendar. I'll make sure to have you look it over for us next year, Case.

The caption for Raining Perseids is also misleading, if you apply it to 2014. However, minor anachronisms are often unavoidable and are better left as they are, to maintain the integrity of the original APOD captions. Perhaps in future calendars, a note could be made on the back page saying that the captions were originally written for their initial publication date, as indicated in the html filename at the end of each caption. Seems a simpler solution.

Nitpicker wrote:The caption for Raining Perseids is also misleading, if you apply it to 2014. However, minor anachronisms are often unavoidable and are better left as they are, to maintain the integrity of the original APOD captions. Perhaps in future calendars, a note could be made on the back page saying that the captions were originally written for their initial publication date, as indicated in the html filename at the end of each caption. Seems a simpler solution.

That's exactly what the html filename at the end of each caption is for -- to let people know when the text was written.

owlice wrote:

Nitpicker wrote:The caption for Raining Perseids is also misleading, if you apply it to 2014. However, minor anachronisms are often unavoidable and are better left as they are, to maintain the integrity of the original APOD captions. Perhaps in future calendars, a note could be made on the back page saying that the captions were originally written for their initial publication date, as indicated in the html filename at the end of each caption. Seems a simpler solution.

That's exactly what the html filename at the end of each caption is for -- to let people know when the text was written.

I figured as much, but I wonder if it is so obvious to all, especially those who may not be familiar with dates in YYMMDD format (or even filenames).

Maybe not obvious, but I hope anyone interested could puzzle it out.

In any case, yes, leaving the "minor anachronisms", as you put it, was a considered decision, for exactly the reason you list.

owlice wrote:Maybe not obvious, but I hope anyone interested could puzzle it out.

Won't somebody think of the Luddites?!

Nitpicker wrote:

owlice wrote:Maybe not obvious, but I hope anyone interested could puzzle it out.

Won't somebody think of the Luddites?!

I thought that was your job!!

owlice wrote:

Nitpicker wrote:Won't somebody think of the Luddites?!

I thought that was your job!!

Huh? I just find the slime moulds.

Love the version with larger numbers! Thanks for doing it!

Thank you for the lovely calendar!

Please CORRECT the PDF file for the SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE link which unfortunately points to an IDENTICAL file as the NORTHERN HEMISPHERE link. You have TWO different links, but the FILE at both is identical. Thanks so much for the spectacular images and overall format of the calendar !!!