October 20, 2007
Another year older means another lap aboard a world spinning through the void at impossible speed.
The Milky Road
Birthday · October 20, 2007
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published October 20, 2007. Credit: Larry Landolfi. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Inspired during a visit to Fort Davis, Texas, home of McDonald Observatory and dark night skies, photographer Larry Landolfi created this tantalizing fantasy view. The composited image suggests the Milky Way is a heavenly extension of a deserted country road. Of course, the name for our galaxy, the Milky Way (in Latin, Via Lactea), does refer to its appearance as a milky band or path in the sky. In fact, the word galaxy itself derives from the Greek for milk. Visible on moonless nights from dark sky areas, though not so colorful as in this image, the glowing celestial band is due to the collective light of myriad stars along the plane of our galaxy, too faint to be distinguished individually. The diffuse starlight is cut by dark swaths of obscuring galactic dust clouds. At the beginning of the 17th century, Galileo turned his telescope on the Milky Way and announced it to be composed of innumerable stars.
Image credit: Larry Landolfi