And now we pause to observe the beauty of our Universe

[malaise]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2013/jun/11/visions-universe-royal-maritime-in-pictures


Orion Deep Wide Field, photographed from Earth with a Takahashi telescope


The Crab Nebula (M1) from the Hubble Space Telescope, 2005

[shenmue]

1. Amazing

Beautiful colors.

[malaise]

5. I added two of them

I need to see the rest of the universe about now - sick of this effin' planet and its goons

[Whisp]

2. we're so little. n/t

[malaise]

9. Isn't that the truth

[leftstreet]

3. Oh wow

How kind of you to post this link!

DURec

[malaise]

10. I actually wish I was looking down at earth

about now

[one_voice]

4. Very beautiful!

on edit: I didn't realize there were more at the link. I missed the link. Awesome pictures.

[malaise]

8. 11 of them

all gorgeous

[niyad]

6. k and r--thank you for this timely reminder of how beautiful the universe actually is, no matter

how depressing the news seems to be.

[malaise]

7. And the news is beyond depressing

We all need this pause

[reformist2]

11. It makes me wonder, why is there all this stuff anyway? :O

[malaise]

12. Aliens probably wonder about our purpose as well

Come to think of it I wonder more and more every day. Looks like humans are here to destroy stuff.

[JNelson6563]

13. Wow! Incredible!

Really enjoyed those!

Julie

[malaise]

17. Nice

[Eleanors38]

14. Very pretty. Thanks.

[malaise]

18. Funny how well the colors merge and mingle

[Eleanors38]

26. Yes, it is. On the "opposite end" I saw microscopic pictures of organic...

instances of fractal geometry which were also quite beautiful, and prompted speculation on a unifying theory of how things are.

[Loudly]

15. What Earth year(s) do these correspond to?

Light requires time to reach the lens of the camera.

So we are looking back in time.

These are snapshots of what was going on when as expressed in Earth time?

[malaise]

16. There are DUers who could answer your questions

but I am not one of them.

[Posteritatis]

19. The light for those two is about 1,350 and 6,300 years old, respectively

There's a lot of wiggle room on both since they're each huge, three-dimensional objects.

[Loudly]

20. Oh right. Not a simple answer.

The light in the foreground is more recent than the light in the background.

[Posteritatis]

21. Yep. Orion's a few dozen lightyears across and Crab is ten or so.

The latter's especially neat - it's one of the recent(!) supernovae remnants that's been photographed clearly enough that you can actually see it expand over the years, bit by bit.

[malaise]

24. A genuine DU expert

[Uncle Joe]

22. Beautiful pics.

Thanks for the thread, malaise.

[malaise]

23. Nice to see you Uncle Joe

[Uncle Joe]

25. It's nice seeing you as well, malaise.

[mindwalker_i]

27. When God Farts

the cosmic microwave background listens.

[Hekate]

28. Thank you, Malaise

So much. We need a Namaste smiley.

[malaise]

29. Agreed