August 12, 2023
Light takes eight minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth. It took the universe 13.8 billion years to make you.
Ghirigori - Star Scribbles
Birthday · August 12, 2023
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published August 12, 2023. Credit: Paolo Palma. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
It's fun to scribble on the canvas of the sky. You can use a creative photographic technique to cause the light of point-like stars to dance across a digital image by tapping lightly on the telescope while making an exposure. The result will be a squiggly line traced by the star (or two squiggles traced by binary stars) that can reveal the star's color. Colorful lines, dubbed Ghirigori, made from stars found in the northern sky constellations Bootes, Corona Borealis, Ophiucus, and Coma Berenices, are captured in this artistic mosaic. The 25 stars creating the varied and colorful squiggles are identified around the border. Of course, temperature determines the color of a star. While whitish stars tend to be close to the Sun's temperature, stars with bluer hues are hotter, and yellow and red colors are cooler than the Sun. Weekend Watch: Perseid Meteor Shower
Image credit: Paolo Palma