New To Mac - Question

I just went out and bought a macbook pro yesterday and am trying to become familiar with osx. There is one thing I can't figure out though...i downloaded skype and it put a skype icon on my desktop. How can i get rid of this icon? I drag it to eject and it gets rid of it but whenever i use the application, the icon pops up again in the top right corner. I've also tried dragging it to the applications folder but that isn't working either.

The Skype app and most apps you download are DMG's (Disk Images). Like an ISO. You click and it mounts, but it's not installed. You drag the application icon out of the DMG and drop it into the Applications folder. Then you unmount the Skype.DMG and you can store it for later install or delete it. You then run the Skype in the Applications folder. You can drag a copy to the Dock for easy Launching later.

You are clicking on the DMG each time and it's mounting. A lot of apps for OSX come in DMGs and install is simply dragging the apps icon from the DMG to Applications. Very easy once you do it a time or two.

Thank you! That was a very helpful explanation.