August 21, 2025
You were born on a tiny world orbiting an ordinary star in an unremarkable galaxy — and yet, the fact that you exist at all is the most...
Mostly Perseids
Birthday · August 21, 2025
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APOD published August 21, 2025. Credit: Klaus Pillwatsch. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
In this predawn skyscape recorded during the early morning hours of August 13, mostly Perseid meteors are raining down on planet Earth. You can easily identify the Perseid meteor streaks. They're the ones with trails that seem to converge on the annual meteor shower's radiant, a spot in the heroic constellation Perseus, located off the top of the frame. That's the direction in Earth's sky that looks along the orbit of this meteor shower's parent, periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle. Of course the scene is a composite, a combination of about 500 digital exposures to capture meteors registered with a single base frame exposure. But all exposures were taken during a period of around 2.5 hours from a wind farm near Mönchhof, Burgenland, Austria. Red lights on the individual wind turbine towers dot the foreground. In their spectacular close conjunction, bright planets Jupiter and Venus are poised above the eastern horizon.
Image credit: Klaus Pillwatsch