German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who had figured out a lot about planets and space in the early 1600s, once theorized that the universe had a birthday. That day was April 27, 4977 B.C., and while Kepler was right on a whole lot of things – like the motion of planets – he was pretty wrong about this one. It took until the 20th Century to determine that the universe was actually about 13.7 BILLION years older than that.
Nonetheless, we all love a good birthday party. So in honor of our 6,997th universe birthday (seriously, she doesn’t look a day over 27), we’re taking a look at some of the coolest, most breathtaking photos of the universe.
Happy Birthday Universe!
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareA view of the Earth appears over the Lunar horizon as the Apollo 11 Command Module comes into view of the Moon before Astronatus Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr. leave in the Lunar Module, Eagle, to become the first men to walk on the Moon's surface. The 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon mission is celebrated July 20, 1999. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers)
Venus Transit Across The Sun
ShareIN SPACE - JUNE 5-6: In this handout composite image provided by NASA, the SDO satellite captures the path sequence of the transit of Venus across the face of the sun at on June 5-6, 2012 as seen from space. The last transit was in 2004 and the next pair of events will not happen again until the year 2117 and 2125. (Photo by SDO/NASA via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareAn image from NASA''s Hubble Space Telescope of a vast, sculpted landscape of gas and dust where thousands of stars are being born, July 26, 2001. The star-forming region, called the 30 Doradus Nebula, has the largest cluster of massive stars within the closest 25 galaxies. (Photo Courtesy of NASA/Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this handout provided by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, dark, narrow streaks on the slopes of Hale Crater are inferred to be formed by seasonal flow of water on surface of present-day Mars. These dark features on the slopes are called "recurring slope lineae" or RSL. Scientists reported on September 28, 2015 using observations with the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer on the same orbiter detected hydrated salts on these slopes at Hale Crater, corroborating the hypothesis that the streaks are formed by briny liquid water. (Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this image released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope shows a halo of hot gas surrounding spiral galaxy NGC 4631 that is similar to the Milky Way galaxy June 19, 2001 while in space. NASA plans to replace the Hubble telescope with the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and plans to deorbit the Hubble telescope sometime in 2010. According to Anne Kinney, division director of astronomy and physics at NASA headquarters, NASA states August 1, 2003 that it is firmly committed to the new JWST, a deep-space observatory due for launch in 2011 on a European Ariane 5 rocket. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareThe sun's coronal loops are shown in this photo, released September 26, 2000, taken by special instruments on board NASA's Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) spacecraft. Fountains of multimillion-degree, electrified gas in the atmosphere of the sun have revealed the location where the solar atmosphere is heated to temperatures 1000-times greater than the sun's visible surface. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareThe majestic spiral galaxy NGC 4414 as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. (Photo by NASA)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this composite handout image released from the Hubble Space Telescope the Whirlpool Galaxy and Eagle Nebula (L) are seen , April 25, 2005 released for the Hubble's 15th anniversary. Nasa's Space Telescope has obited the Earth for 15 years and has taken more than 700,000 images of the comos. These images are two of the sharpest images Hubble has ever produced, taken with the newest camera. (Photo by Hubble Space Telescope/Nasa via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareThis NASA image shows ladder-like structures within a dying star. This new image, taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, reveals startling new details of one of the most unusual nebulae known in our Milky Way. Cataloged as HD 44179, this nebula is more commonly called the "Red Rectangle" because of its unique shape and color as seen with ground-based telescopes. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareA Hubble Space Telescope image released February 1, 2001 of the so-called "ant nebula" (Menzel 3, or Mz3) reveals the "ant's" body as a pair of fiery lobes protruding from a dying star. The Hubble images directly challenge old ideas about the last stages in the lives of stars. By observing Sun-like stars as they approach their deaths, the Hubble Heritage image of Mz3, along with pictures of other planetary nebulae, shows that our Sun's fate probably will be more interesting, complex, and striking than astronomers imagined just a few years ago. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareThis Hubble space telescope image released January 4, 2001 shows the Hubble-X, a glowing gas cloud in one of the most active star-forming regions in galaxy NGC 6822. The galaxy lies 1.6 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius, one of the Milky Way's closest neighbors. This hotbed of star birth is similar to the fertile regions in the Orion Nebula in our Milky Way Galaxy, but on a vastly greater scale. The intense star birth in Hubble-X occurred about 4 million years ago, a small fraction of the approximate 10-billion-year age of the universe. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareThis handout image from ESA/NASA, obtained August 21, 2008 taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board the ESA?s Mars Express shows the highest-resolution full-disc image yet of the surface of the moon Phobos. The image data was acquired from a distance of 97 km with a spatial resolution of about 3.7 m/pixel in orbit 5851. These images have surpassed all previous images from other missions in continuous coverage of the illuminated surface at the highest spatial resolution of 3.7 m/pixel. (Photo by NASA/ESA via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this handout image provided by NASA, the SDO satellite captures a ultra-high definition image of the Transit of Venus across the face of the sun at on June 5, 2012 from space. The last transit was in 2004 and the next pair of events will not happen again until the year 2117 and 2125. (Photo by SDO/NASA via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this handout provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover recorded this view of the sun setting at the close of the mission's 956th Martian day, or sol April 15, 2015, from the rover's location in Gale Crater, Mars. (Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M Univ via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this handout released by NASA, a Mars landscape is seen in a picture taken by the panoramic camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit January 8, 2003. The circular topographic feature, dubbed Sleepy Hollow, can be seen along with dark markings that could have bee caused by the airbag-encased lander as it bounced and rolled to rest. The rover landed on Mars January 3. (Photo by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Cornell University via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareView of the Earth as viewed by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon, December 7, 1972. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Meditierranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the southern hamisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is the Malagasy Republic. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this handout image released from the Hubble Space Telescope the Whirlpool Galaxy is seen , April 25, 2005 released for the Hubble 15th anniversary. Nasa's Space Telescope has obited the Earth for 15 years and has taken more than 700,000 images of the comos. This image is one of the sharpest images Hubble has ever produced, taken with the newest camera. (Photo by Hubble Space Telescope/Nasa via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this handout image provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), NASA space shuttle Atlantis in Earth orbit just before docking for the last time with the International Space Station July 10, 2011 in space. Atlantis has embarked on a 12-day mission to the International Space Station where it will deliver the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module packed with supplies and spare parts. This will be the final launch of the space shuttle program, which began on April 12, 1981 with the launch of Colombia. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareThe Sharpest View Of Mars Ever Taken From Earth Was Obtained By The Recently Refurbished Nasa Hubble Space Telescope (Hst). This Stunning Portrait Was Taken With The Hst Wide Field Planetary Camera-2 (Wfpc2) On March 10, 1997, Just Before Mars Opposition, When The Red Planet Made One Of Its Closest Passes To The Earth (About 60 Million Miles Or 100 Million Km) (Photo By Nasa/Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this NASA digital illustration handout released on February 22, 2017, seven TRAPPIST-1 planets are shown as they might look as viewed from Earth using a fictional, incredibly powerful telescope. The sizes and relative positions are correctly to scale: This is such a tiny planetary system that its sun, TRAPPIST-1, is not much bigger than our planet Jupiter, and all the planets are very close to the size of Earth. Their orbits all fall well within what, in our solar system, would be the orbital distance of our innermost planet, Mercury. With such small orbits, the TRAPPIST-1 planets complete a "year" in a matter of a few Earth days: 1.5 for the innermost planet, TRAPPIST-1b, and 20 for the outermost, TRAPPIST-1h. This particular arrangement of planets with a double-transit reflect an actual configuration of the system during the 21 days of observations made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in late 2016. The system has been revealed through observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope as well as other ground-based observatories, and the ground-based TRAPPIST telescope for which it was named after. (Photo digital Illustration by NASA/NASA via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this handout provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a close-up image of a region near Pluto's equator shows a range of mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft as it passed within 7,800 feet of the dwarf planet on July 14, 2015. The 1,050-pound piano sized probe, which was launched January 19, 2006 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, zipped by the planet yesterday. (Photo by NASA/APL/SwRI via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareThis handout image of the giant, active galaxy NGC 1275, obtained August 21, 2008 was taken using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope?s Advanced Camera for Surveys in July and August 2006. It provides amazing detail and resolution of fragile filamentary structures, which show up as a reddish lacy structure surrounding the central bright galaxy. These filaments are cool despite being surrounded by gas that is around 55 million ?C. They are suspended in a magnetic field which maintains their structure and demonstrates how energy from the supermassive black hole hosted at the centre of the galaxy is transferred to the surrounding gas. (Photo by NASA/ESA via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this handout provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Pluto's largest moon Charon is shown from a distance of 289,000 miles (466,000 kilometers) from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, taken on July 13, and released July 15, 2015. New Horizons passed by Pluto July 14, closing to a distance of about 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers). The image was combined with color information taken from the craft's Ralph instrument. The 1,050-pound piano sized probe was launched January 19, 2006 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, (Photo by NASA/APL/SwRI via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this image provided by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, a stellar jet in the Carina Nebula is pictured in Space. Today, September 9, 2009, NASA released the first images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope since its repair in the spring. (Photo by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this handout photo provided by NASA, a Solar and Heliospheric Observatory image shows Region 486 that unleashed a record flare last week (lower left) November 18, 2003 on the sun. The spot itself cannot yet be seen but large, hot, gas-filled loops above this region are visible. These post-flare loops are still active. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)
Happy 6,997th Birthday Universe
ShareIn this NASA handout image taken by Astronaut Ricky Arnold, Hurricane Florence gains strength in the Atlantic Ocean as it moves west, seen from the International Space Station on September 10, 2018. Weather predictions say the storm will likely hit the U.S. East Coast as early as Thursday, September 13 bringing massive winds and rain. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)
