July 7, 2016
The night sky on your birthday is never quite the same twice — the planets shift, the constellations drift, the Moon wears a different phase.
The Altiplano Night
Birthday · July 7, 2016
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APOD published July 7, 2016. Credit: Babak Tafreshi. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
The Milky Way is massively bright on this cold, clear, altiplano night. At 4,500 meters its reflection in a river, a volcanic peak on the distant horizon, is captured in this stitched panorama under naturally dark skies of the northern Chilean highlands near San Pedro de Atacama. Along the Solar System's ecliptic plane, the band of Zodiacal light also stands out, extending above the Milky Way toward the upper left. In the scene from late April, brilliant Mars, Saturn, and Antares form a bright celestial triangle where ecliptic meets the center of the Milky Way. Left of the triangle, the large purple-red emission nebula Sharpless 2-27, more than twenty Moon diameters wide is centered around star Zeta Ophiuchi.
Image credit: Babak Tafreshi