August 18, 2015
The story of your birthday began billions of years before calendars existed, in furnaces of light and clouds of dust.
Announcing Comet Catalina
Birthday · August 18, 2015
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APOD published August 18, 2015. Credit: Ian Sharp. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Will Comet Catalina become visible to the unaided eye? Given the unpredictability of comets, no one can say for sure, but it seems like a good bet. The comet was discovered in 2013 by observations of the Catalina Sky Survey. Since then, Comet C/2013 US10 (Catalina) has steadily brightened and is currently brighter than 8th magnitude, making it visible with binoculars and long-duration camera images. As the comet further approaches the inner Solar System it will surely continue to intensify, possibly becoming a naked eye object sometime in October and peaking sometime in late November. The comet will reside primarily in the skies of the southern hemisphere until mid-December, at which time its highly inclined orbit will bring it quickly into northern skies. Featured above, Comet Catalina was imaged last week sporting a green coma and two growing tails.
Image credit: Ian Sharp