January 26, 2008
The story of your birthday began billions of years before calendars existed, in furnaces of light and clouds of dust.
Crescent Mercury in Color
Birthday · January 26, 2008
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APOD published January 26, 2008. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Hard to spot against the twilight glow near planet Earth's horizon, a crescent Mercury was imaged close up by the MESSENGER spacecraft early last week. Colors in this remarkable picture were created using data recorded through infrared, red, and violet filters. The combination enhances color differences otherwise not visible to the eye across the innermost planet's cratered surface. In this view, light bluish material seems to surround relatively new craters, contrasting with the mostly drab, brown terrain. Mercury itself is 4,880 kilometers in diameter. The full resolution image shows features as small as 10 kilometers across.