Starship Asterisk*

the manhattan sunset photo is an excellent example of how stupid and useless some of your apod's can be. it just doesn't measure up to the quality and subject matter apod content should have in my own humble opinion. to be fair, these kind of photos don't appear whith great frequency, but when they do, i really have to wonder why i bothered to visit the apod site.
i have a puupy named "star"...why don't we feature her for an upcoming apod? maybe you could make the connection to canis major, canis minor, orion, and on and on? wouldn't that be just as interesting and worthy of gracing the pages of apod?

It's all subjective.

I liked the picture. Sure it doesn't reveal any deep truth, but it's every bit as relevant, and certainly more aesthetically pleasing than pictures of planets lining up. Besides, such things are pretty rare. I'm frankly surprised that perhaps one only marginally relevant picture a month makes you never want to enjoy the very well-selected collection of pictures that show up the rest of the time. If I got upset every time I visited cnn.com only find out nothing interesting happened...

APOD isn't a divinely perfect publication. Just sit back and try to enjoy it.

I find it very amazing that APOD can come up with an interesting photo every day of the year. I don't believe many of us could do as good a job. Thanks APOD for all the wonderful selections you have offered for our enjoyment!!!!
Orin

not only is it impressive that they have a photo every day but they are archived and available from the very first day to today's
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

Very pretty picture; however, I see no relevance for this to be on an astonomy website.

I do see relevance in this type of post, even though I'm not sure that they mentioned it. Most of the history of astronomy, even the interest of it comes with finding the positions of the stars / sun / moon / planets over the course of the year.

The position of the sun does change over the course of the year, and of any science subject that should be involved with, it is definitely astronomy. It goes north/south because of the tilt of the earth and the changing of the axis relative to the position of the sun and all that fun stuff.

I am stating this without and references cited, but I have at least seen TV shows of ancient cultures measuring the changing position of the sun and moon and lining up their monuments and the like to reflect it. I think it is incredibly exciting to know they were as excited about the heavens as we are.

Also, don't forget that APOD images are mostly of stars, star groupings, and star communities, dead and dying stars, and a smattering of planetary images. There are some of the few images that include both a planetary image and a star imgae. The sun is a star after all.

Willsos wrote:Very pretty picture; however, I see no relevance for this to be on an astonomy website.

They're likening the street layout of Manhatten to the layout of plinths at ancient observatories like Stonehenge. I think that's fair content for APOD.

Hello All

At least we do not have to think toooooooooo much about this image.

I have had a relaxing last 2 weeks. Doing very little.

The July 12th APOD was awesome! This APOD helped show how our everyday lives touch astronomy, and at the same time connected us to our distant ancestors, who appear to have been much more aware of astronomy than many people today. Both my Native American ancestors as well as my European ancestors paid close attention to astronomy, with the much darker ancient skies as a close companion in life.

Ancient sacred spaces that are based on astronomy are surprisingly similar across cultures and millennia. There are literally hundreds of ancient, sacred observatories, including Stonehenge, the medicine wheels all over the western US, “mystery hill” in Massachusetts, Avebury, and many more. In fact, they are found on every continent except for Antarctica. Here are a whole bunch of them, with great pictures and background information:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/AO/

We all have different tastes. If I enjoy the connection to our wider human family more than I do a picture of a galaxy, then I’ll write in praise for the APOD I like. If someone else likes one that I don’t like as much, then that’s fine – we can have different favorites while all liking APOD as a whole. APOD is a great way for us all to bring the wonder of the universe into our lives, and it makes my life more wondrous on a regular basis.

All the best-

-Jon

P.S. Won’t the same thing happen at sun*rise* on November 28th and January 12th? The alignment at 2pm everyday doesn’t seem as dramatic, since the sun is so high.

iamlucky13 wrote:It's all subjective.

I liked the picture. Sure it doesn't reveal any deep truth (snipped)
APOD isn't a divinely perfect publication. Just sit back and try to enjoy it.

I liked it too, and it also shows that the only way you'll see the full height of the Empire State Building is from an angle, it's not actually positioned at the end of the street. Unlike inthe film 'Men in Black' for example.

I believe it was repositioned in Independence Day too

BMAONE23 wrote:I believe it was repositioned in Independence Day too

Doh.

it's still a poor and wasted choice of a picture which was the main point of my post.