February 26, 1999
The story of your birthday began billions of years before calendars existed, in furnaces of light and clouds of dust.
Dark Cloud
Birthday · February 26, 1999
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published February 26, 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.
Ominously foreshadowing events to come, a dark cloud of obscuring dust stands out against a luminous star field in the Milky Way. Cataloged as Feitzinger and Stuwe object "1-457" this fuliginous interstellar nebula is relatively close - possibly only 1,000 light-years distant. Near its core it is dense enough to block almost all of the light from the numerous, more distant stars visible toward the galactic center region. In addition to dust grains, dark nebulae which abound in the plane of our Galaxy are likely to contain interstellar gas and represent potential raw material for future star formation.