May 23, 2021
The cosmos is full of spectacular things: ringed planets, exploding suns, rivers of stars across the night.
The Galaxy Tree
Birthday · May 23, 2021
A little universe, just for you
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APOD published May 23, 2021. Credit: César Vega Toledano ; Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
First came the trees. In the town of Salamanca, Spain, the photographer noticed how distinctive a grove of oak trees looked after being pruned. Next came the galaxy. The photographer stayed up until 2 am, waiting until the Milky Way Galaxy rose above the level of a majestic looking oak. From this carefully chosen perspective, dust lanes in the galaxy appear to be natural continuations to branches of the tree. Last came the light. A flashlight was used on the far side of the tree to project a silhouette. By coincidence, other trees also appeared as similar silhouettes across the relatively bright horizon. The featured image was captured as a single 30-second frame in 2015 and processed to digitally enhance the Milky Way.
Image credit: César Vega Toledano ; Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt