One of the best widgets around has to be APOD. The text below is from its website, which includes a list of educational resources on astronomy and a link to a discussion board.
Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is originated, written, coordinated, and edited since 1995 by Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell. The APOD archive contains the largest collection of annotated astronomical images on the internet.
In real life, Bob and Jerry are two professional astronomers who spend most of their time researching the universe. Bob is a professor at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan, USA, while Jerry is a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland USA. Jerry is a married, mild and lazy guy, while Robert is much the same but recently divorced. Each might appear relatively normal to an unsuspecting guest. Together, they have found new and unusual ways of annoying people such as staging astronomical debates. Most people are surprised to learn that they have developed the perfect random number generator.
APOD is proud to acknowledge that it received several accolades during its short existence, including a Scientific American 2001 Sci/Tech Web award.
Do you enjoy APOD? Do you have a picture that would make a good APOD? If so, we would enjoy hearing from you. Images are most often submitted by email or by posting to a web site. Please write to Robert Nemiroff at nemiroff@mtu.edu or Jerry Bonnell at bonnell@grossc.gsfc.nasa.gov regarding image submissions. Note for image submissions: The APOD pages are collected annually on a CD-ROM, which is distributed free of charge to educators and the general public. If you would like your image to be considered for an APOD but do not want your image included in this CD-ROM collection, please let us know.
Thank you for sharing the APOD experience! We genuinely hope you have had an entertaining and educational few moments with us.
Mindful Shopping note: After you download the APOD widget, be sure to click on the i in the lower right-hand corner; the window will flip over and display information about the image.
