August 25, 2007
The story of your birthday began billions of years before calendars existed, in furnaces of light and clouds of dust.
Just Passing Through
Birthday · August 25, 2007
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published August 25, 2007. Credit: Robert Stephan. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
M33 is a big, beautiful spiral galaxy a mere 3 million light-years away, understandably a popular target for enthusiastic astro-imagers. Just as understandably, interfering satellite trails and airplane streaks that are becoming more common in planet Earth's busy night sky are processed out of their finished images. But Robert Stephan left these streaks in his final picture of M33, realizing that he had also recorded something relatively rare. His otherwise cosmic skyscape shows the tail of an aircraft passing overhead through his telescope's field of view. A navigational strobe light on the plane flashed across the tail at exactly the right moment. The brief illumination produced the incongruous, though remarkably sharp image.
Image credit: Robert Stephan