January 21, 2016
On your birthday, the Earth completed another orbit — 584 million miles traveled since your last celebration.
The View Toward M101
Birthday · January 21, 2016
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APOD published January 21, 2016. Credit: Fritz Helmut Hemmerich. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Sweeping through northern skies, Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) made its closest approach on January 17, passing about 6 light-minutes from our fair planet. Dust and ion tails clearly separated in this Earth-based view, the comet is also posed for a Messier moment, near the line-of-sight to M101, grand spiral galaxy in Ursa Major. A cosmic pinwheel at the lower left, M101 is nearly twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy, but some 270 thousand light-centuries away. Both galaxy and comet are relatively bright, easy targets for binocular-equipped skygazers. But Comet Catalina is now outbound from the inner Solar System and will slowly fade in coming months. This telescopic two panel mosaic spans about 5 degrees (10 Full Moons) on the sky.
Image credit: Fritz Helmut Hemmerich