June 17, 2004
Your birthday coincides with the eternal dance of celestial bodies — planets tracing their ancient orbits, moons rising and setting, comets...
Comet NEAT and the Beehive Cluster
Birthday · June 17, 2004
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
Free PNG · 1080 × 1350 · No account needed
Image rights and credit requirements apply when sharing or reusing imagery.
Date & occasion only
Change the year
APOD published June 17, 2004. Credit: Jimmy Westlake (Colorado Mountain College). A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
To the unaided eye, they appeared as similar fuzzy patches. But when a bright comet passed in front of a bright star cluster last month, binoculars and cameras were able to show off their marked differences in dramatic fashion. Pictured above, the bright comet, C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) shows many details of its coma and tail, while far in the distance the Beehive open cluster, M44, shows many of its stars. Comet Q4 has now faded to the edge of unaided visibility and can best be found with a sky map and binoculars from the Northern Hemisphere well into June. Star cluster M44 will remain an impressive star cluster toward the constellation of Cancer indefinitely.
Image credit: Jimmy Westlake (Colorado Mountain College)