July 18, 2024
On your birthday, the Earth completed another orbit — 584 million miles traveled since your last celebration.
Messier 24: Sagittarius Star Cloud
Birthday · July 18, 2024
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APOD published July 18, 2024. Credit: Christopher Freeburn. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It's a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Direct your gaze through this gap with binoculars or small telescope and you are looking through a window over 300 light-years wide at stars some 10,000 light-years or more from Earth. Sometimes called the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, M24's luminous stars are left of center in this gorgeous starscape. Covering over 6 degrees or the width of 12 full moons in the constellation Sagittarius, the telescopic field of view includes dark markings B92 and B93 near the center of M24, along with other clouds of dust and glowing nebulae toward the center of the Milky Way.
Image credit: Christopher Freeburn