November 15, 2015
On your birthday, photons that left distant stars before humans walked the Earth finally completed their journey. You began yours.
Leonids Over Monument Valley
Birthday · November 15, 2015
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 November 15, 2015. Credit: Sean M. Sabatini. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
There was a shower over Monument Valley -- but not water. Meteors. The featured image -- actually a composite of six exposures of about 30 seconds each -- was taken in 2001, a year when there was a very active Leonids shower. At that time, Earth was moving through a particularly dense swarm of sand-sized debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle, so that meteor rates approached one visible streak per second. The meteors appear parallel because they all fall to Earth from the meteor shower radiant -- a point on the sky towards the constellation of the Lion (Leo). The yearly Leonids meteor shower peaks again this week. Although the Moon's glow should not obstruct the visibility of many meteors, this year's shower will peak with perhaps 15 meteors visible in an hour, a rate which is good but not expected to rival the 2001 Leonids. By the way -- how many meteors can you identify in the featured image?
Image credit: Sean M. Sabatini