APOD turns seven.

June 17, 2002 1:12 PM

APOD turns seven. The Astronomy Picture of the Day hit the seven-year mark on Sunday (full archive list here). Simple and consistent in design, (possibly a record-holder for longest consistent design of an updated site) it's still maintained by astronomers Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell.
posted by kokogiak (10 comments total)

Of course, you always find one thing after you post - there was a subtle design change once - on December 16, 1995 they made a radical change of the bgcolor, from #FFFFFF to #F4F4FF. The new bgcolor has remained standard since. ;)
posted by kokogiak at 1:15 PM on June 17, 2002

That's one thing about really, really boring people. They're always consistant.
posted by fnord_prefect at 1:37 PM on June 17, 2002

It's only the foolish constencies that are hobgoblins, et al. I like the apod. Have ever since a brother-in-law used it as an example to show me what this whole thing called the "web" was about. It's nice to see that it's design didn't need to be changed in seven years.
posted by yhbc at 1:58 PM on June 17, 2002

Why does the site itself need to be flashy with all the gorgeous imagery that the site presents? :) I'm constantly amazed and astounded by this site. On the other hand, there's only so much cosmic beauty I can take before I implode into a mass of quivering insignificance.

Cheers to APOD ... send your laudatory e-mails to their mirror sites!
posted by WolfDaddy at 2:16 PM on June 17, 2002 [1 favorite]

I am a huge fan of this site. I always point it out to whoever will listen to me. I also discovered it early on - a fascinating, well-written site with lots of great links (hmmm. sound familiar?) and gorgeous pictures.
posted by vacapinta at 2:55 PM on June 17, 2002

I know Jerry Bonnell ( Yes, I am VERY special.) He and Robert do this on their own time. It has been NASA's most popular website pretty much since it's inception.
posted by Red58 at 3:12 PM on June 17, 2002

I set it as the Internet home page on some of the computers I use. I never cease to be astounded by the beauty of many photos, and amazed that I get to live in a time when I can see them. Thanks, Jerry & Robert.
posted by theora55 at 3:15 PM on June 17, 2002

One of the first sites I surfed across, and still one of my favorites! Long live APOD!
posted by evanizer at 3:17 PM on June 17, 2002

There are a small handful of sites that I visit every day. Astronomy Picture of the Day is one of them. Thanks, Jerry and Robert.
posted by mikegre at 5:33 PM on June 17, 2002

Q17: If you guys weren't so modest, what would you tell us about APOD?
Q17: Since we are so modest we keep quiet about a lot of things. For example, it just wouldn't be proper to let slip that we feel that APOD is one of the first sites (since 1995) to make journalistic use of full web hypertext. By "full web hypertext", we mean that the APOD text is liberally annotated with hyperlinks to anywhere on the web where good and relevant information is available. We don't claim to be good at writing full web hypertext, just relatively early users of this informative -- and time consuming -- type of writing.

Candidates for the first weblog? :)
posted by vacapinta at 5:42 PM on June 17, 2002