November 23, 2023
You share your birthday with the light of distant galaxies that has been traveling for millions of years just to arrive here, now, alongside...
Along the Taurus Molecular Cloud
Birthday · November 23, 2023
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APOD published November 23, 2023. Credit: Yuexiao Shen. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
The cosmic brush of star formation composed this interstellar canvas of emission, dust, and dark nebulae. A 5 degree wide telescopic mosaic, it frames a region found north of bright star Aldebaran on the sky, at an inner wall of the local bubble along the Taurus molecular cloud. At lower left, emission cataloged as Sh2-239 shows signs of embedded young stellar objects. The region's Herbig-Haro objects, nebulosities associated with newly born stars, are marked by tell-tale reddish jets of shocked hydrogen gas. Above and right T Tauri, the prototype of the class of T Tauri variable stars, is next to a yellowish nebula historically known as Hind's Variable Nebula (NGC 1555). T Tauri stars are now generally recognized as young, less than a few million years old, sun-like stars still in the early stages of formation.
Image credit: Yuexiao Shen