Astropro's Website Of the Week Award ©1997 by Richard Nolle

DEC 29, 1997 - Astronomy Picture of the Day is the real CSOTD (Cosmic Site Of The Day) on the World Wide Web. That's because here, each day brings a new and different image from the cosmos, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. (Don't let that 'written by a professional astronomer' bit scare you: this is good and clear stuff, it won't hurt at all and you might even learn something.) And if your heart is breaking at the thought of all the marvelous vistas you've missed because you only found out about this site today, fear not! Lucky for you, the good folks at NASA, Universities Space Research Association and Michigan Technological University who maintain Astronomy Picture of the Day saw fit to incorporate an archive of past selections - lots of good stuff in storage there, all the way back to June 16, 1995. (On the Web, that's just about forever.) There's also a subject index you can use if you're interested in feasting your eyes on specific celestial objects and such. And you even get a search engine that's a quick and easy image locator.

What kind of images are on hand at Astronomy Picture of the Day? Mostly real eye candy: pictures of planets, stars, galaxies, nebula and the like - those gorgeous cosmic life forms whose existence is both within and beyond us. (Okay, maybe some of the NASA folks will balk at my calling them life forms. But I wrote exactly what I meant to write.) A little more on the prosaic side are the pictures of space vehicles, observatories and famous people of cosmic import for one reason or another - like Julius Caesar, for example. But even these less than stellar images have their own cosmic tales to tell, so don't brush them off sight unseen.

So the next time your spirit could stand some uplifting, just thank your lucky stars that you found (and bookmarked) this site for sore eyes.

Richard Nolle, Certified Professional Astrologer phone or fax 480-753-6261 - email rnolle@astropro.com Box 26599 - Tempe, AZ 85285-6599 - USA on the World Wide Web at http://www.astropro.com