June 21, 2015
On the day you were born, the universe did what it has always done best: transformed chaos into beauty.
Rings and Seasons of Saturn
Birthday · June 21, 2015
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APOD published June 21, 2015. Credit: Damian Peach. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
On Saturn, the rings tell you the season. On Earth, today marks a solstice, the time when the Earth's spin axis tilts directly toward the Sun. On Earth's northern hemisphere, today is the Summer Solstice, the day of maximum daylight. Since Saturn's grand rings orbit along the planet's equator, these rings appear most prominent -- from the direction of the Sun -- when the Saturn's spin axis points toward the Sun. Conversely, when Saturn's spin axis points to the side, an equinox occurs and the edge-on rings are hard to see. In the featured montage, images of Saturn over the past 11 years have been superposed to show the giant planet passing from southern summer toward northern summer. Although Saturn will only reach its northern summer solstice in 2017 May, the image of Saturn most analogous to today's Earth solstice is the bottommost one. Follow APOD on: Facebook, Google Plus, or Twitter
Image credit: Damian Peach