Why do we all love APOD so? How is it that APOD inspires so much affection that people volunteer to create mirror sites and translate APOD into many different languages, to run affiliated social media sites (including Facebook (Spanish, Portuguese), Twitter, G+, Instagram, Reddit, and tumblr), and create APOD apps and administer a discussion forum? That people stop by every day to look at the site? That it has fans all over the world?

That you are here indicates that you like APOD, too! Why? What do you like about the site? Please let us know in the comments below!

Can you believe it?! APOD is 20!! Since the first APOD appeared 20 years ago today, the two creators and editors of APOD, Dr. Jerry Bonnell and Dr. Robert Nemiroff, have created 7,302 pages to show and explain the wonders of our universe, day after day, sometimes finishing them literally just minutes before the page went live at midnight ET. Remember the Venus transit? Ninety minutes before June 5, details as to how (even whether!) the live feed for the image would work on the APOD page were still being ironed out. Yet other APODs take weeks  to pull off, even when they don’t look at all complicated, such as the one showing the Great Meteor Procession of 1913. And these guys have day jobs! Yet they keep on, day after day.

Thank goodness! APOD shows us … well, everything. I tried to write out a list, a description, but it is everything, from the top and the end of the world and things normally hidden from view and almost impossibly small to everything out there, and up, and out, and far, farther, farthest. The universe. Everything. Views of its magnificence brought to us on our favorite electronic devices, day after day after day.

Happy 20th birthday, APOD!! And thank you, APOD… for everything!! Happy birthday!!