July 17, 2003
The Earth has carried you around the Sun again, steady as ever, while the stars kept their patient watch.
The Cat's Paw Nebula
Birthday · July 17, 2003
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APOD published July 17, 2003. Credit: Bernd Flach-Wilken & Volker Wendel (Spiegelteam), 2002 Namibia trip. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
As soon as we find out whose cat did this . . . Nebulae are as famous for being identified with familiar shapes as perhaps cats are for getting into trouble. No cat, though, could have created the vast Cat's Paw Nebula visible in Scorpius. At 5500 light years distant, Cat's Paw is an emission nebula with a red color that originates from an abundance of ionized hydrogen atoms. Alternatively known as the Bear Claw Nebula or NGC 6334, stars nearly ten times the mass of our Sun have been born there in only the past few million years. Pictured above, the Cat's Paw nebula was photographed during an astrophotography expedition to Namibia.
Image credit: Bernd Flach-Wilken & Volker Wendel (Spiegelteam), 2002 Namibia trip