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Birthday · March 27, 2020

A Little Drop of Galaxy

March 27, 2020

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

A Little Drop of Galaxy

A little universe, just for you

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APOD published March 27, 2020. Credit: Massimo Tamajo. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.

Behind the image

A Little Drop of Galaxy

Original APOD · March 27, 2020

A drop of water seems to hold an entire galaxy in this creative macro-astrophotograph. In the imaginative work of cosmic nature photography a close-up lens was used to image a previously made picture of a galaxy, viewed through a water drop suspended from a stem. A favorite of many telescope-wielding astroimagers, the galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31. About 100,000 light-years across that majestic galaxy's spiral arms and dust lanes are curved and distorted in the image contained in the centimeter-sized droplet. Andromeda is some 2.5 million light-years distant, but this project was still carried out while spending time indoors.

Image credit: Massimo Tamajo

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