June 16, 1996
Consider this: the iron in your blood was forged in a supernova explosion billions of years ago.
APOD is One Year Old Today
Birthday · June 16, 1996
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APOD published June 16, 1996. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
The first Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) appeared one year ago today. Pictured above are Robert Nemiroff (left) and Jerry Bonnell (right), engaged in creating the APOD web pages. APOD started over speculative conversations on the ultimate value of the World Wide Web. In our (current) view, the WWW is the closest thing yet to an "Encyclopedia of Humanity," and we think it's important to contribute. We are proud to say that APOD has now annotated most of the famous astronomical pictures of our time and has made them available to the general public in an indexed and searchable archive. During it's first year, APOD's main daily picture page has been served over one million times. But APOD's mission continues. As space science progresses more pictures, fresh insights, and new educative links become available. Therefore, so long as public interest and NASA support continue, APOD will continue. We thank all whose gracious e-mail are continually a source of encouragement.