December 13, 1999
The same forces that sculpt nebulae and spin galaxies into existence were at work the day you were born.
A Magellanic Starfield
Birthday · December 13, 1999
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
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APOD published December 13, 1999. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Stars of many types and colors are visible in this Hubble Space Telescope vista of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Over 10,000 stars are visible -- the brightest of which are giant stars. Were our Sun 170,000 light-years distant and among these stars, it would hardly be discernable. By contrast, only a few thousand stars are individually visible at night with the unaided eye, and many of these lie within only a few hundred light-years. Typically, the light we see from nearby stars left during the age of our great-grand-parents, while light from LMC stars started its journey before the dawn of recorded human history.