August 28, 2015
On the day you arrived, the Earth was spinning at a thousand miles per hour, orbiting the Sun at sixty-seven thousand.
Puppis A Supernova Remnant
Birthday · August 28, 2015
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APOD published August 28, 2015. Credit: Don Goldman. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Driven by the explosion of a massive star, supernova remnant Puppis A is blasting into the surrounding interstellar medium about 7,000 light-years away. At that distance, this colorful telescopic field based on broadband and narrowband optical image data is about 60 light-years across. As the supernova remnant expands into its clumpy, non-uniform surroundings, shocked filaments of oxygen atoms glow in green-blue hues. Hydrogen and nitrogen are in red. Light from the initial supernova itself, triggered by the collapse of the massive star's core, would have reached Earth about 3,700 years ago. The Puppis A remnant is actually seen through outlying emission from the closer but more ancient Vela supernova remnant, near the crowded plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Still glowing across the electromagnetic spectrum Puppis A remains one of the brightest sources in the X-ray sky.
Image credit: Don Goldman