Astronomy Picture of the Day(APOD on the World Wide Web: 1995-2001)

http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov

A new Astronomy and Space Science image every day with text and links

Largest annotated archive of diverse astronomy images on the web

A service of LHEA/GSFC and Michigan Tech authored and edited by R.J. Nemiroff and J.T. Bonnell

APOD Site Operations

Daily files are queued in advance and copied to

astropix.html (e.g. ap990123.html astropix.html)

GSFC site updated at midnight ET

All files remain in dated archive: June 16, 1995 to

present

Search engine (GSFC) and Subject Index (by

MTU students) available

Calendar style interface (by M. Sudo).

About 1.5 hrs to make 1 apod (weekends are often

reruns)

APOD Mirror Sites and TranslationsEngland (University College London): http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/apod/astropix.html maintained by Ian Howarth

France (in French from GEOMAN): http://apod.geoman.net/fr/html/index.html maintained by Laurent Laveder

Israel (in Hebrew from Jordan Valley College, Blossoms of Science): http://www.yarden.ac.il/bloss/apod/ap_today.htm, maintained by Shaul Yannai

Italy (in English from Observatorio Astronomico di Brera): http://www.brera.mi.astro.it/apod/, maintained by Chiara Giorgieri

Czech Republic (in Czech): http://www.astro.cz/apod/ maintained by Josef Chlachula

Russia (in English from Moscow University): http://www.sai.msu.su/apod/ maintained by Oleg Bartunov

Russia (in Russian from St. Petersburg Youth Astronomy School): http://apod.da.ru maintained by Alexander Sergeev

Switzerland: http://mirrors.inside.net/apod/apod/, maintained by Balthasar Indermuehle

Taiwan (in Chinese): http://sprite.phys.ncku.edu.tw/~astrolab/mirrors/apod/apod.html, maintained by Han-Tzong Su

From: Writing and Reading Hypermedia on the Web, Leslie Carr, Wendy Hall and Timothy Miles-Board, February 2000, Multimedia Research Group, University of Southampton, UK

APOD is Hypertext Authoring

The Web is a linked literature: we wish to discover what the authors of Web pages are choosing to link and what they are choosing to link to.

… the SCIAM enhanced articles go through separate author and editorial processes. APOD pages, by contrast, are not written by independent authors but by the editors of the site. Also by contrast, each APOD page is written explicitly to be linked: the textual content is constructed to function as an abstract with links providing all the detailed or background information required by the various readership profiles.

(Conclusion:) At the moment, there is very little real hypermedia on the Web except that created by authors of hypertext literature and some well edited sites.

The Web is a linked literature … we focussed on the APOD site (1500 pages), the 'enhanced articles' subset of the SCIAM site (100 pages) and a random selection of feature articles from the New Scientist site (25 articles) … - from Carr, Hall and Miles-Board, 2000, Multimedia Research Group, University of Southampton)

Figure 1a: Links per APOD article Average: 32 Std Dev: 7 Number of Articles: 1500 Link density: 55% Destination ratio: 56%

Figure 1b: Links per SCIAM article Average: 52 Std Dev: 16.28 Number of articles: 100 Link density: 40% Destination ratio: 53%

Figure 1c: Links per NewSci article Average: 25 Std Dev: 0.69 Number of Articles: 25 Link density: 26% Destination ratio: 71%

APOD is Hypertext Authoring

Counting Links:The intent of this paper […] is to try to determine the individual decisions and processes that authors make in creating hypertext links, consequently we focussed on the APOD site (1500 pages), the 'enhanced articles' subset of the SCIAM site (100 pages) and a random selection of feature articles from the New Scientist site (25 articles). …

Figure 1a: Links per APOD article Average: 32 Std Dev: 7 Number of Articles: 1500 Link density: 55% Destination ratio: 56%

Figure 1b: Links per SCIAM article Average: 52 Std Dev: 16.28 Number of articles: 100 Link density: 40% Destination ratio: 53%

Figure 1c: Links per NewSci article Average: 25 Std Dev: 0.69 Number of Articles: 25 Link density: 26% Destination ratio: 71%

Writing and Reading Hypermedia(from Carr, Hall and Miles-Board, 2000)

APOD In the Classroom

I teach, among other things, argument and technical writing at Texas A & M (College Station), and I have been using the [APOD] site for the last two years to acquaint my students with scientific forms of discourse.

Brad McAdon , Texas A&M University

I have advertised [APOD] many times to my AST101 class here at SUNY Stony Brook. I have even regularly used its pictures to illustrate various points, since you have a good search index on the archive as well.

Ralph Wijers (Prof.), SUNY Stony Brook Dept. of Physics and Astronomy

I use [APOD] nearly every day in my second grade classroom as part of the opening, news, flag salute, etc. I find it a great way to expose and teach about a wide variety of topics. We especially enjoyed your Hale-Bopp pictures this spring.

Alki Elementary School

Astronomy Picture of the Day In the Classroom

I'm a middle school science teacher with too much curriculum and not enough time. To beat some of the time crunch and have my students practice writing observations, I displayed the APOD for the first few minutes of class, had the students write a paragraph about what they saw, and then discussed briefly their observations. I'd fill in the details of the images a they attempted to make inferences about what they saw. I think the students learned a lot of astronomy, saw some "way cool" images, and practiced their descriptive language ability.

Phil Goulding, Colorado

Astronomy Picture of the Day In the Classroom

I am a fifth grade teacher, and have used your APOD site quite a bit this year. …

Each morning I display the APOD picture without the explanation. The children work to speculate as to what the picture might show. By the year's end, my ten- and eleven-year olds are surprisingly well-versed in all sorts of astronomical terminology and quite knowledgeable about stars, galaxies, the Solar System, and various celestial phenomena.

Brian Segool, Gwinnett Co. Public Schools, Lawrenceville, GA

Astronomy Picture of the Day In the Classroom

I teach Special Ed. at the High School level and was the first in my department with internet access. … I used your photos in two ways.

First, I printed out the occasional attention grabbing topical photos and laminated them, then hole punched them for easy storage in a regular binder. These we could pass around and discuss. The people and vehicles on the Moon and Mars fascinated my students, who were born long after the Moon missions and were unaware of them. The asteroid scare was easier to discuss with an asteroid sitting in front of us.

Second, I made a template which allows an accordion folded, tiny book to be made out of one page. Your photos were imported and the students selected the ones which represented what they had most enjoyed learning. They added text and printed their own book about their preferred planet. They then shared the books.

Mary Ann Levy, Edison High School

Since becoming an APOD addict, I have turned many other people on to the experience, including my mother, who is an NYC high school English teacher. She prints out the pages every day to share with her students and then plasters them on her office wall. It is quite something to see this.

Astronomy Picture of the Day In the Classroom

I use [APOD] nearly every day in my second grade classroom as part of the opening, news, flag salute, etc. I find it a great way to expose and teach about a wide variety of topics. We especially enjoyed your Hale-Bopp pictures this spring.

Alki Elementary School

APOD Access by Domain

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Percent Page Views

.gov

.net

.com

.edu