Sorry, wanted to put this in the Front Page Stories-forum, but wasn't allowed to post there, so where do I put it?

Anyway:

Woohoo, my picture was accepted for Astronomy Picture of the Day!
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070420.html

It's on tomorrow, April 20th, but you can preview it on my web page, http://www.dalsgaard.eu/Pantheon/index.html

The Pantheon is my favourite building in the whole world, so that makes it even sweeter to get this photo accepted. Amazing fact: The dome is a perfect half-sphere, and if it was continued as a complete sphere, it would just touch the floor of the building. And oh yes: the Pantheon was built in the 2nd century a.D. - Impressive to say the least...

HUGE congratulations! Very pleased for you!

Congratulations not only for having your submittal accepted, but also for taking such an awesome photo!

It belongs in "Community Chit Chat," so I moved it for you!

And well done! Watch out for your website to get swamped!

--Emily

Congratulations, nice shot! I hope your website can handle a lot of traffic because you are about to get some ;-)

Wow - that is really amazing. Good on ya, mate!

Getting a submission accepted for APOD is one particular ambition that I would love to achieve one day...

Very well done indeed, Oersted!

My congrats, Soeren. This is a very evocative image!
I must admit my fault, I live 150Km from Rome and I never visited Pantheon from inside! Now will be a must for me!

PS: Ian, I suspect we will see very soon one of your stunning Saturn views published by APOD. ;-)

Congratulations - the UMSF APOD tally gets another boost

Beautiful image, very evocative.

Doug

A great picture of a great subject! I hope lot's of people appreciate it. The Pantheon is a building I would dearly love to see. Nearly 1900 years old and still the largest masonry dome in the world - amazing. The idea of the view through the lantern as representing the Earth within the heavens is brilliant. It makes you wonder just how 'modern' the architect's thinking might have been.

'Simple' but superb image... which camera/lense did You use?

An elegant photo. Congrats!

Thanks for all your congrats guys!

The camera is a Canon 350 (Digital rebel).

The lens is the Sigma AF 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5 DC macro. I like it for the heft and clarity at the corners, but it is really bad at auto-focusing, especially in low light.

My pic is now on this page:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070420.html

You put the thoughts I have into words much better than I could have done.

I'm sure the builders had some ideas, when they capped the dome with an empty space. Surely it wasn't just done with no thought behind it. And surely it wasn't just an empty space to them.

But what they were thinking is difficult to know, I guess. Did they really make a heliocentric world image, with the sun in the middle, illuminating the rest of the world? Or did they think of the center as the Earth? - I'm not quite sure I believe that one. Don't think we have any historical representations of the Earth as a blue ball in space before Apollo8.

Or was there a more prosaic reason behind the opening? I'm thinking that since it was a Pantheon, maybe they just had the opening so that incense smoke and smoke from offerings would waft out at the top? (I don't know if anybody ever studied the Pantheon's properties as a chimney!).

Oculus means eye, maybe the opening was thought of as a viewpoint.

Or maybe it was a gate? Smoke rising out of it, from animals whose intestines had served for auguries. Or cremated people, going to the Heavens?

Just rambling here...