APOD: APOD Turns 17 (2012 Jun 16)

[APOD Robot]

APOD Turns 17

Explanation: The first APOD appeared seventeen years ago today, on 1995 June 16. Although garnering only 14 page views on that day, we are proud to estimate that APOD has now served over one billion space-related images over the last 1.7 decades. That early beginning, along with a nearly unchanging format, has allowed APOD to be a consistent and familiar site on a web frequently filled with change. Many people don't know, though, that APOD is now translated daily into many major languages and featured on social media sites and smartphone applications. We again thank our readers and NASA for their continued support, as well as the folks who created the great pictures -- many times with considerable effort -- that APOD has been fortunate enough to feature over the years. Many can be contacted by following links found in the credit line under the image. Today's birthday collage includes numerous galaxies captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

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[bystander]

Happy 17th Anniversary, APOD!

To celebrate the occasion, the crew of the Starship Asterisk* have assembled:

tc6xaf_big.jpg

Courtesy: My Galaxies

Ship's Log: APOD Retrospectives and Collections
A nostalgic look back at Astronomy Picture of the Day

For those of you who might have wondered, "What happened to the APOD Retrospectives?", they are all here. Every APOD ever published, cataloged by month and day posted, with an easy to use calendar style index to the daily retrospectives. There are also special topical APOD collections for your perusal.

Even the APOD Robot has got into the act. Notice the new feature link at the bottom of his post, This Day in APOD. Each day that link will take you to the retrospective of the day.

Congratulations on the APOD, geckzilla!

See the other Anniversary Cards!

[thats me]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY and congratulations on a fantastic job!

[Moonlady]

Happy birthday APOD!!! Thanks for all the great job you do!

[StarryStarryNot6-16]

To quote The Beatles: It's my birthday too, yeah! Somewhat more than 17, LOL.
And it's the 49th anniversary of the Soviets launching the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova!!! And to celebrate, China is planning on sending their first woman, Liu Yang, into space today. Bon voyage!

[owlice]

To celebrate the occasion, the crew of the Starship Asterisk* have assembled...

Well, mostly bystander. He has worked on the Retrospectives, creating them one by one each and every day, for a good part of the year. A big project which required steady time, and a lot of it! And then he created the very cool calendars for accessing them, too! Thank you, bystander, for giving us this new way to slice through the wealth of APOD!

And happy birthday, APOD! Congratulations to geckzilla for her tribute, to others for theirs, to all who produce the interesting, beautiful images that APOD displays and has to choose from, and the editors who bring these images to our notice and annotate them so well and sometimes amusingly, too.

[nstahl]

Thank you and congratulations to all of you who work to bring APOD to us. It's nearly always educational and enjoyable and a LOT of us look forward to it every day.

[ian@ursaden.com]

Thanks for rekindling my interest in Astronomy. Can we have a video of the candles being blown out please ??
Ian

[smita]

Happy Birthday, APOD. You make my day every day.

Thanks you.
Smita

[orin stepanek]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY APOD!

[neufer]

<<Bloomsday is a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce during which the events of his novel Ulysses (which is set on 16 June 1904) are relived. It is observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere. Joyce chose the date as it was the date of his first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle; they walked to the Dublin suburb of Ringsend. The name derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses.

..............................................................................................................
Bloomsday begins at Dublin sunrise (3:33 LMT) Thursday June 16, 1904 (= 17 x 112).
& ends at Dublin sunset (-3:33 LMT)
2 x 17 years after Charles Dickens's Thursday June 16, 1870 (= 17 x 110) burial.
...............................................................................................

Bloomsday (a term Joyce himself did not employ) was invented in 1954, on the 50th anniversary of the events in the novel, when John Ryan (artist, critic, publican and founder of Envoy magazine) and the novelist Flann O'Brien organised what was to be a daylong pilgrimage along the Ulysses route. They were joined by Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, Tom Joyce (a dentist who, as Joyce's cousin, represented the family interest) and AJ Leventhal (Registrar of Trinity College, Dublin). Ryan had engaged two horse drawn cabs, of the old-fashioned kind, which in Ulysses Mr. Bloom and his friends drive to poor Paddy Dignam's funeral. The party were assigned roles from the novel. They planned to travel round the city through the day, visiting in turn the scenes of the novel, ending at night in what had once been the brothel quarter of the city, the area which Joyce had called Nighttown. The pilgrimage was abandoned halfway through, when the weary Lestrygonians succumbed to inebriation and rancour at the Bailey pub in the city centre, which Ryan then owned, and at which, in 1967, he installed the door to No. 7 Eccles Street (Leopold Bloom’s front door), having rescued it from demolition.>>

Mr. Gaffney found that the stone had gone through the roof, penetrated three thicknesses of shingles and a hemlock board about 1 inch thick; then, about 4 feet below this, passed through a 7/8th inch hemlock board forming the floor of a hayloft. Having a hardness of about one-third of that as Maple, Hemlock has the oxymoronic distinction of being the hardest of the softwoods. It's list of undesirable qualities as a construction wood seems rather long, and its Janka hardness of 500 ranks it near the bottom of wood species used in flooring.

For the meteorite, it was a good thing the wood was not
Brazilian Walnut, a species with a Janka hardness of 3684

An Article In Meteorite Times Magazine
Martin Horejsi's Meteorite and Tektite Books

<<[A] meteorite fell June 16, 1911, at about 5:20 p.m., on the farm of William Gaffney, 7.5 miles northeast of Kilbourn, Wisconsin. Mr. Gaffney states that at the time of the fall he was in his hay field about 20 rods from his barn. While there he heard a rumbling noise similar to that produced by a heavy wagon passing over a stony road. The noise, he states, was much louder than thunder. The day was close and muggy with no breeze and no sign of a local thunderstorm. The noise lasted about three or four minutes. While many heard the sound of the fall, the lone witness to the impact reported that the sound stopped at the same time he entered the barn.

While it was going on Mr. Gaffney walked towards the barn and when he entered it the sound ceased. When he had been in the barn about a minute he heard a loud report like that of a cannon and saw a small stone strike the manger about 10 feet from where he was standing, rebound, strike the stone foundation of the barn, and then bury itself to a depth of 2.5 inches in the hard-packed clay soil which formed the floor of the barn.

Mr. Gaffney picked up the stone, but found it so warm he could hold it only for a second or so. It remained warm nearly three hours. When first picked up it had a straw color on its surface, but gradually assumed a black color. Neighbors of Mr. Gaffney within a radius of three miles heard both a rumbling noise and a report when the stone struck the barn. Fishermen at Lake Mason, near Briggsville, Marquette County, Wisconsin, about five miles east of Mr. Gaffney's place, also heard a rumbling noise.

The hole said to have been made by the meteorite is about 4 inches long by 2 inches wide, and is about the size and shape that such a projectile would have made. The shape of the hole indicates that the meteorite was moving in the direction of its longest axis and not broadside when it penetrated the board. It does not seem to be possible to determine positively from the shape of the opening which end of the meteorite was in front, although the indications are that it was the pointed end. The meteorite fits the opening in the board a little better in this position, yet the opposite end of the meteorite shows abrasion and removal of the crust in several places, in a manner that might have been caused by the striking of this end against boards. The penetrated board has the brittleness peculiar to hemlock and hence might offer less resistance to a falling body than some other kinds of wood.The barn stands in a north and south direction with the roof sloping east and west. The stone fell upon the east slope of the roof and appears to have come from a direction a little south of east.

The stone is comparable in size and shape to a man's fist. It weighed a little less than 2 pounds, the exact weight being 27.5 ounces, or 772 grams. The specific gravity of the stone as a whole was 3.43. Its length was 4.5 inches (11.5 cm.), width 3 inches (8 cm.) and height 2.5 inches (6 cm.).

"The small meteorite which fell in Kilbourn, Wisconsin, in 1911, and passed through a board in the roof of a barn, sold as high as seven dollars a gram, largely on this account, as it was a stone of a common chondritic type. Obviously a meteorite has no actual value and these prices are not only wholly artificial and unscientific, but silly. It should be added that this condition is due largely to the mere collector rather than to the serious student. Ambitious heads of departments in our public museums are, however, by no means blameless." - Merrill & Foshag's 1929 book titled Minerals from Earth and Sky>>

[biddie67]

And an enthusiastic shoutout from my little corner of this ol' world ~~ Happy Birthday, for sure AND here's to many, many more !!!

[Ann]

Indeed, congratulations, APOD! And I love that "galaxy birthday cake", geckzilla!

Dannebrog falling from the sky during the Battle of Lyndanisse, June 15, 1219.
Painted by Christian August Lorentzen in 1809.

Art, I just heard "Bloomsday" being mentioned on my local radio. In the same show they mentioned the Danish "Day of Valdemar", June 15, 1219, when the Danish flag, "Dannebrog", supposedly fell from the sky during a battle between Danish and Estonian armies in Estonia! Valdemar was the Danish king at that time, who triumphantly brought the heaven-sent flag home to Denmark.



But there are more things in the sky than King Valdemar could ever have imagined, as the Astronomy Picture of the Day is showing us every day!

Ann

[Dome]

Happy Birthday APOD!
and greetings from Germany

[ears2012]

every morning I look forward to APOD, with all its wondrous photography, surprises, and occasional humor, THANKS!

[starstruck]

Happy Universary APOD!!! Here's to another billion images

[Sowndbyte]

Happy Birthday APOD ,I still enjoy viewing the fantastic photos and letting my mind try to fathom the vastness and beauty of our universe

[Tilt]

On Tuesday, June 20, 1995 I sat down at my desk for my first day as a Summer programming intern at GSFC. I fired up my Netscape browser and searched for ’Astronomy’ in AltaVista…. and what followed has been a daily ritual for nearly 17 years. I cannot fully express my appreciation for so very many flights of wonder and imagination APOD has inspired — so I will simply say, “Thanks for the Memories…” <VBG>.

(I try not to date myself, but I *am* waiting by the phone for me to call.)

[smitty]

Happy Birthday, APOD! Thank you for helping to keep us mentally young, inquisitive, and challenged to understand this amazing universe in which we find ourselves.

[FloridaMike]

Happy Birthday APOD, thanks for all you have done over the last 17 years.

[rstevenson]

Happy Anniversary APOD.

And a big shoutout to Judy Schmidt (aka geckzilla) for that extraodinary image. Galaxy candles!

Rob

[Guest]

"with a nearly unchanging format"

Yes, it hardly has changed and I find the bold blue hyperlinks very comforting. Memories of the how all pages first appeared on the WWW.

Don't change a thing. HB

[Moonlady]

Dear APOD Crew,

here is your birthday cake I decorated for you! I could not put all 17 candles on it, if I did you would get a chocolate lava instead

Enjoy!

[moonstruck]

WOW! Thanks guys and girls...17 years... and I've been here most of them..Happy Birthday and many more to come.

[Psnarf]

A galaxy-filled birthday cake! How you managed to construct that cake in an expanding universe baffles me.
Happy Birthday!!

PS. You may need some help blowing out those galactic candles, or a ludicrously huge black hole.