APOD is my favorite website. APOD is Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Today the site turns 30. That’s old in internet-years. APOD is a product of NASA and its collaborations with places like Michigan Tech and the University of Maryland.

These sorts of government/university partnerships are the backbone of fundamental science in the United States. The nation advances when we learn more about our world. Humanity benefits from knowledge. Scholarship and research are essential to civilization.

Today at APOD they created an image of another image. They took 1836 individual images from five years of contributions to the site (it is updated daily). They made a digital mosaic of them, a total of 23,232 tiles. And they used them to make a starry night:

Cool, huh? Click on the image to make it larger.

I like APOD because I get a daily dose of awe. You should check it out, especially the archive. There’s something for everyone, from deep space to spacey scenery.

Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night is in New York City at the Museum of Modern Art.