September 22, 2018
On your birthday, photons that left distant stars before humans walked the Earth finally completed their journey. You began yours.
Window Seat over Hudson Bay
Birthday · September 22, 2018
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published September 22, 2018. Credit: Ralf Rohner. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
On the August 18 night flight from San Francisco to Zurich, a window seat offered this tantalizing view when curtains of light draped a colorful glow across the sky over Hudson Bay. Constructed by digitally stacking six short exposures made with a hand held camera, the scene records the shimmering aurora borealis or northern lights just as the approaching high altitude sunrise illuminated the northeastern horizon. It also caught the flash of a Perseid meteor streaking beneath the handle stars of the Big Dipper of the north. A few days past the meteor shower's peak, its trail still points across the sky toward Perseus. Beautiful aurorae and shower meteors both occur in Earth's upper atmosphere at altitudes of 100 kilometers or so, far above commercial airline flights. The aurora are caused by energetic charged particles from the magnetosphere, while meteors are trails of comet dust.
Image credit: Ralf Rohner