December 9, 2023
The night sky on your birthday is never quite the same twice — the planets shift, the constellations drift, the Moon wears a different phase.
Pic du Pleiades
Birthday · December 9, 2023
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APOD published December 9, 2023. Credit: Jean-Francois Graffand. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Near dawn on November 19 the Pleiades stood in still dark skies over the French Pyrenees. But just before sunrise a serendipitous moment was captured in this single 3 second exposure; a bright meteor streak appeared to pierce the heart of the galactic star cluster. From the camera's perspective, star cluster and meteor were poised directly above the mountain top observatory on the Pic du Midi de Bigorre. And though astronomers might consider the Pleiades to be relatively close by, the grain of dust vaporizing as it plowed through planet Earth's upper atmosphere actually missed the cluster's tight grouping of young stars by about 400 light-years. While recording a night sky timelapse series, the camera and telephoto lens were fixed to a tripod on the Tour-de-France-cycled slopes of the Col du Tourmalet about 5 kilometers from the Pic du Midi.
Image credit: Jean-Francois Graffand