July 3, 2021
A birthday is what happens when cosmic time briefly puts down the scale of eons and pays attention to a single human year.
Along the Milky Way
Birthday · July 3, 2021
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published July 3, 2021. Credit: Rolf Weisenfeld. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
You can't walk along the Milky Way. Still, under a dark sky you can explore it. To the eye the pale luminous trail of light arcing through the sky on a dark, moonless night does appear to be a path through the heavens. The glowing celestial band is the faint, collective light of distant stars cut by swaths of obscuring interstellar dust clouds. It lies along the plane of our home galaxy, so named because it looks like a milky way. Since Galileo's time, the Milky Way has been revealed to telescopic skygazers to be filled with congeries of innumerable stars and cosmic wonders.
Image credit: Rolf Weisenfeld