APOD_AMA

Fake answer: Yes, but [censored] [censored] because of [censored].

Real answer: Sure, other planetary systems, moons in our Solar System, a powerful gamma-ray burst just as it is exploding, and the region right near a black hole, to name a few!

6) Would you rather fight 100 duck sized Curiosity Rovers or 1 Curiosity Rover sized duck?

Fake answer: It depends on the software.

Real answer: It depends on the software.

Fake answer: That we all might be a part of your imagination.

Real answer: That we really don't understand very much about our universe. We don't really know what dark energy is, what dark matter is, what happens on the smallest scales, or what the fate of the universe will be. Oh, you said one aspect. OK, delete everything after "dark energy."

Fake answer: Just as easy. I just ask my kids to do it and make sure they list my name. Sometimes if my kids are in school I make my wife do it.

Real answer: It is harder because there are so many more good images! APOD now rejects about 10 images for every one accepted. Back in 1995, there was some concern that APOD would run out of images. We did not think so, though, because, for example, the Ranger missions took thousands of images of the surface of the Moon. So we could always run a fresh Ranger image with "So this is lunar crater # 1431 -- notice how the center is slightly grayer than the yesterday's lunar crater # 1672". But even then there were enough good images to have an interesting APOD just about every day.

Fake answer: We use a system called Blatent Financial Favoritism, or BFF for short. Apparently, this system has become quite common around the internet recently. For example, the other day some guy used BFF to get his crappy picture of the moon on APOD. He did it right as he shows up with a dump truck full of gold bars. It took over two hours to move all of those gold bars into our secure stadium vault which is now nearly full. But then it turned out that one of the gold bars was SCRATCHED, so then we didn't even run his crappy image. It's all about standards.

Real answer: We mainly want really cool, really important, and really educational images. If I say "wow!" within the first two seconds of seeing an image -- it is likely to end up on APOD. It an image is a "classic" so as to surely end up in astronomy textbooks, for example, then it is likely to end up on APOD. If the image is a great hook to explain a key concept in astronomy or physics, it is likely to end up on APOD. Also if a current sky event like an eclipse is captured in a cool and educational fashion, it is ... yes, likely to end up on APOD.