February 25, 1998
On your birthday, the Earth completed another orbit — 584 million miles traveled since your last celebration.
The Solar Neighborhood
Birthday · February 25, 1998
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published February 25, 1998. Credit: P. C. Frisch (U. Chicago), with thanks to C. Wellman. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
You are here. The orange dot in the above false-color drawing represents the current location of the Sun among local gas clouds in the spiral Milky Way Galaxy. These gas clouds are so thin that we usually see right through them. Nearly spherical bubbles surround regions of recent star formation. The purple filaments near the Sun are gas shells resulting from star formation 4 million years ago in the Scorpius-Centaurus Association, located to the Sun's lower left. The Sun has been between spiral arms moving through relatively low density gas for the past 5 million years. In contrast, the Sun oscillates in the Milky Way plane every 66 million years, and circles the Galactic Center every 250 million years.
Image credit: P. C. Frisch (U. Chicago), with thanks to C. Wellman