Astronomy Picture of the Day . ... Fittingly, 1999 saw a decade of astronomical discoveries to an end with portents of things to come - embodied in new spacecraft, telescopes, and perspectives to explore the distant Universe across the electromagnetic spectrum. ... Solar Moss . ... An Earth Ornament . ... The Apollo 8 astronauts spent the 1968 Christmas Season orbiting the Moon, returning with striking images of both Moon and Earth from space - pictures which inspired the world. ...