I can remember visitingAstronomy Picture of the Dayfrom the Macintoshes in my elemental shoal computer science lab ( this was in the mid - XC , before Apple take off phone its computers “ Macs ” ) . Today , some two 10 later , I stillvisitAPODregularly . How many websites can you say that about ?
https://gizmodo.com/the-milky-way-galaxy-as-seen-from-a-747-1590984471
https://gizmodo.com/the-moon-venus-mars-in-a-single-frame-1688520786
https://gizmodo.com/a-rare-glimpse-of-rapidly-pulsating-aurorae-over-icelan-1710617491
Over at The Verge , Sean O’Kane interviewed APOD creators Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell , the Vasco da Gamma ray uranologist who created the internet site and twenty years ago this week , and still run it today .
APOD serves its nominal purpose with minimal flare . Every day — the site update at 12AM ET — there ’s one featured image ( or video ) of our cosmos . That ’s accompanied by a short description with some links for anyone who wants to dig a fiddling deeper .
The land site is available in 20 oral communication , has aTwitter accountwith a million followers , aGoogle+ page — do n’t scoff , the astrophotography community of interests in reality thrive there — with over 900,000 buff , and nearly 200,000 likeson Facebook . There ’s anInstagram score , countlessapps , and there ’s even a dedicatedsubreddit . All that help answer for for more than 1 million visit to the APOD website each day – a far yell from the first mean solar day 20 year ago when it barely cracked a dozen .
APODlaunchedon June 16 , 1995 . In progress of its milestone birthday , I spoke on the phone with the two guys who have execute the internet site by hand for two tenner , a apparently unfathomable labor in the historic period of passing content . How do they do it ? A compounding of Microsoft Word , a fiery passion for astrophotography , and lots and flock of emails .
Do check out the audience at The Verge ; Nemiroff and Bonnell are cool dudes , and the exchange is full of gems like this :
Under the hood , how does APOD work out ?
Robert Nemiroff : I just open up Microsoft Word on my personal computer . I bring up the textual matter file from an old APOD post from a couple of days ago . I cancel out the erstwhile stuff , I put the new hooey in , then I transport it to [ the internet at ] NASA Goddard and I look it over , and with the VI editor I make change , because I almost always make some kind of mistake somewhere . And then I expect at the result and see if it looks reasonable , and if so then I just allow it alone .
If it ai n’t break up , correct ?
Another way to appreciate APOD ’s legacy is to moderate out its archive . It ’s huge . If you scroll all the way to the bottom , you ’ll findthe first postis dated June 16 , 1995 ( there ’s a screen shot of the page at the top of this office ) . felicitous early birthday , APOD . You do n’t look a day over 10 .
touch the source at[email protected]and@rtg0nzalez .
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