About APOD@coRank

What is APOD@coRank?

APOD@coRank is a cooperative ranking site, based on coRank and the Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD) project.

What is the APOD project?

The Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is a service provided by NASA and Michigan Technological University (MTU), dedicated since 1995 to feature each day a different image or photograph of our universe, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

The 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.

What is a co-ranking (cooperative ranking) site?

A coRanking site is a site where you can share whatever you find interesting on the web and where you can also find what's interesting for others. Everyone then can vote up what they liked, or vote down what they didn't like.

Most sites at coRank are about specific topics, communities or sources, though that's not a requirement. Some people even create private coRank sites just for themselves (sort of a private bookmarking site).

In many coRanking sites, everything is submitted by users and visitors. In others - like this one - visitors cannot submit entries. Likewise, some sites at coRank allow voting on the submitted entries (like this one), and others don't allow it.

What is special about the APOD @ coRank site?

APOD @ coRank brings together the wonderful content provided by the APOD project and the social features of coRank. Here, users can enjoy the amazing APOD pictures and also participate, comment, vote, etc.

Why this site doesn't have all the APOD pictures since 1995?

The APOD @ coRank site was launched on October 2007. We feel that the main purpose of this site is collaboration, so when a new picture is posted on the APOD site, people can add value to it by commenting it, etc. Posting the hundreds of photos already published by the APOD project would certainly build a nice repository of pictures here, but that repository already exists: the APOD project pages.

For that reason, we decided to go back in time just a few weeks from the day we launched this site, and while we might post older pictures in the future, for now our focus is to feed the site with the "fresh" daily images provided by the APOD project.

Is this a joined venture between coRank and NASA/MTU?

No. While we have explicit permission from Jerry Bonell and Robert Nemirof - the creators and coordinators of the APOD project (otherwise we would have not created this site) this site is in no way associated with NASA or MTU, and nothing in this site implies a statement by NASA/MTU or an endorsement from NASA/MTU.

Do Jerry and Rob read this site?

They might, or might not. When you post a comment here, direct it to the community in general, not specifically to them.