August 3, 2010
The story of your birthday began billions of years before calendars existed, in furnaces of light and clouds of dust.
The Planet and the Radio Dish
Birthday · August 3, 2010
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published August 3, 2010. Credit: Alex Cherney (Terrastro). A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
What planet is this? Although seemingly something out of The Little Prince, the planet is actually Earth. More specifically, it is a small part of the Earth incorporated into a four image stereographic "Little Planet " projection. The central fisheye image points down, while the surrounding wide-angle images were taken at a 30 degree tilt and added digitally later. Earth-anchored items surrounding the image center include green grass, dark shadows, and trees near and far. At the image top ("noon" if the planet were a clock) is the well-lit Parkes Radio Telescope dish in New South Wales, Australia. The surrounding sky contains many jewels of the night including the Moon at 9 pm, the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy at 1:30 pm and 7 pm, and the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy at 5 pm. A full field interactive version of this scene can be found here.
Image credit: Alex Cherney (Terrastro)