← Another date

Birthday · March 13, 2019

Highlights of the North Spring Sky

March 13, 2019

On the day you arrived, the Earth was spinning at a thousand miles per hour, orbiting the Sun at sixty-seven thousand.

Highlights of the North Spring Sky

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.

Change the year

APOD published March 13, 2019. Credit: Universe2go.com. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.

Behind the image

Highlights of the North Spring Sky

Original APOD · March 13, 2019

What can you see in the night sky this season? The featured graphic gives a few highlights for Earth's northern hemisphere. Viewed as a clock face centered at the bottom, early (northern) spring sky events fan out toward the left, while late spring events are projected toward the right. Objects relatively close to Earth are illustrated, in general, as nearer to the cartoon figure with the telescope at the bottom center -- although almost everything pictured can be seen without a telescope. As happens during any season, constellations appear the same year to year, and, as usual, the Lyrids meteor shower will peak in mid-April. Also as usual, the International Space Station (ISS) can be seen, at times, as a bright spot drifting across the sky after sunset. After the Vernal Equinox next week, the length of daytime will be greater than the length of nighttime in Earth's northern hemisphere, an inequality that will escalate as the spring season develops. Also as spring ages, Jupiter becomes visible increasingly earlier in the night. As spring draws to a close, the month of May will feature the third of four full moons of the season, one of the definiitions of a Blue Moon.

Image credit: Universe2go.com

Explore March 13 in other years