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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

🌌 NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

The Milky Way Through the Summer Triangle

Date: 1996-12-12

The Milky Way Through the Summer Triangle

View HD Image

Explanation:

There are more than a few stars in our Galaxy.
The light from many of them combines to appear as a wisp of faint
light across the night sky - the Milky Way.
In the northern hemisphere, away from city lights
and during the summer months, part of the Milky Way
can be seen behind the Summer Triangle
of stars - Deneb,
Vega,
and Altair.
These are the brightest three stars in the above photograph,
listed from left to right, respectively. If you could collect
light in your eyes for 10 minutes at a time (instead of the usual
1/10th of a second), you might see something like the
above photograph.
Behind the Summer Triangle
lies some of the vast star fields
of our Milky Way Galaxy, containing
literally billions
of stars. The dark band across the middle that seems to divide
the stars is actually interstellar dust,
which absorbs more visible light than it emits and so appears
dark.