Our Amazing Universe

oooh, thats a keeper.

Breathtaking. Thanks for that.

Think on this: Every one of those little white dots is not just a star, but likely an entire evolving planetary system. The Carina nebula is one of the biggest star-birth regions in our galaxy, and also home to the star Eta Carinae, regarded as one of the two or three most powerful stars in the galaxy and the likeliest candidate for the next supernova. It, along with the localized cloud of dust that contains it, may be present in this image, or it may lie just outside it (I'll have to check). If you google "Eta Carinae" you'll undoubtedly get a spectacular Hubble image.

And, because God hates the northern hemisphere, all this is mainly visible from the soft underbelly of the planet in places like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina, dammit.

caw

Funny...but it looks like someone has superimposed two heads in it. You sure this has not been played with? On the left side is a white head...and towards the right side is a human form........

Am I the only one to see this?

"I was going to say I saw a duck and a horsie, but I changed my mind."

'He not busy being born is busy dying.'

blacbird said:

And, because God hates the northern hemisphere, all this is mainly visible from the soft underbelly of the planet in places like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina, dammit.

caw

Click to expand...

You really want to be in the line of sight of Eta Carinae's hair-trigger gamma ray gun of doom? Let's swap houses.

You really want to be in the line of sight of Eta Carinae's hair-trigger gamma ray gun of doom? Let's swap houses.

Click to expand...

There've been a couplah good shows about world-ending events on Discovery Channel or History or whichever, lately.

Being line of sight during a Gamma Ray Burst would probably be the more merciful thing. Otherwise, you linger while the sky goes from glorious blinding wh -- (oops, see? You're already dead) to an eerie green glow to ugly browns and then you're dead from slow radiation or from the whole eco-system dying out.

Animal Apocalypse was one of the shows, but another was 10 (or maybe 12) Ways The World Could End.

Sadly, of those 12 ways the world could end ... not one is me being love-monkeyed to death by Megan Fox!

Don't tell me the Universe is beautiful, I've seen Megan Fox.
Tell me the Universe is cruel ... I've seen Megan Fox.

No fair! You guys have the best universe. Mine doesn't have any of that stuff.

Dang, never seen such a collection of demonic faces in all my life. The more I stare at it, the more I see. At least of dozen of em.

Tri

Albedo said:

You really want to be in the line of sight of Eta Carinae's hair-trigger gamma ray gun of doom? Let's swap houses.

Click to expand...

Eta Carinae's barrel is aimed about 45 degrees wrong. That one, at least, we don't need to worry about. But maybe this one . . .

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/03/03/wr-104-a-nearby-gamma-ray-burst/

caw

triceretops said:

Dang, never seen such a collection of demonic faces in all my life. The more I stare at it, the more I see. At least of dozen of em.
Tri

Click to expand...

And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
-- T.S. Eliot -- The Wasteland

Click to expand...

And it is cold dust, cold dust at the end
That robs the last heat from we who were the hot dust
The birthplace of stars
is the graveyard of stars
and in between there is us
we bastards born you and I in this brothel of dreams

CACTUSWENDY said:

Funny...but it looks like someone has superimposed two heads in it. You sure this has not been played with? On the left side is a white head...and towards the right side is a human form........

Am I the only one to see this?

Click to expand...

And that's the human brain for you. Looking for shapes that make sense everywhere. And nothing makes more sense to the human brain than a human face.

Who is Megan Fox? Is she in the picture?

euclid said:

Who is Megan Fox? Is she in the picture?

Click to expand...

She is a star, yes.
And she illuminates the Universe, yes.

Is she in Eta Carinae?
She would be no farther from me than she is now, or out of reach ... if she were in Eta Carinae, alas.



TRANSFORMERS girl.
Waiting for the spec screenplay that will shake the world on its axis. Typing as fast as I can.

Oh, man.... My house is out of focus.

Again.

Williebee said:

Oh, man.... My house is out of focus.

Again.

Click to expand...

If you can find your house in their I'll give you a cookie, no really, I'll bake one up and deliver it personally...with a ski mask on >.>

i so set that as my desktop background!

Marcus said:

i so set that as my desktop background!

Click to expand...

Why doesn't anyone care about their computer's foreground?

And why all the concern about your desktop's "background" ? What's past is past, I say, let's forgive and forget. We all have things in our backgrounds we're not proud of ... your desktop's no different. It's a big Universe, let's fill it full of Forgiveness instead of Accusations of the past.

Except for that star in the upper left: that bastard owes me money.