February 24, 1999
Another year older means another lap aboard a world spinning through the void at impossible speed.
A Milky-Way Band
Birthday · February 24, 1999
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published February 24, 1999. Credit: John P. Gleason, Celestial Images. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Most bright stars in our Milky Way Galaxy reside in a disk. Since our Sun also resides in this disk, these stars appear to us as a diffuse band that circles the sky. The above panorama of a southern band of the Milky Way's disk was taken from Australia. A 40-minute exposure was used, and the colors were digitally enhanced. Visible are many bright stars, dark dust lanes, red emission nebulae, blue reflection nebulae, and clusters of stars. In addition to all this matter that we can see, astronomers suspect there exists even more dark matter that we cannot see.
Image credit: John P. Gleason, Celestial Images