Have you seen the largest picture ever taken? For the record, it’s a mammoth 1.5 billion pixel image (69, 536 x 22, 230) and requires about 4.3 GB disk space. Oh, and it’ll take your breath away.
On January 5, NASA released an image of the Andromeda galaxy, our closest galactic neighbor, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The full image is made up of 411 Hubble images, takes you through a 100 million stars and travels over more than 40,000 light years. Well, a section of it anyway.
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Phenomenal. When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut.
My youngest son loves this stuff, I’ll be sure to show this to him.
I love this. I spent a lot of time zooming in on different parts of this photo and then waiting for the zoomed in portions to resolve, and then zooming in again, and again, and again, as far as I could, and then finding a new spot to do it.
Our universe is so vast and beautiful. It’s lovely to see this amazing picture of a nearby galaxy.
Impressive video. I also liked one of the suggested videos. It seems that Andromeda and the Milky Way are going to collide in only 4 billion years. Stock up on milk and bread while you still can. 🙂
I love, love, love astronomical images…and I’m happy to be able to share a website that feeds that love every day.
Astronomy Picture of the Day. Today’s image is of rocks on Mars as photographed by Curiosity—rather dull viewing. Here’s the page for another date with a stunning image:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141109.html
The main website is http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/
It has other useful features. There is the Calendar where you can see all the images for a month in a year (thumbnail image) or do a search by topic. And each day there is a description of what the image is, and what it means. Key words are highlighted so you can click on them and be taken to another site where there may be more photos, more data or other APOD images.
I think it’s a wonderful way to expose everyone to what is out there and what they can learn about it.
I’ve been interested in astronomy since the 60s and the Hubble telescope’s contributions have been such an eye-opener.
If anyone or their children find themselves interested in learning more, there are often Sidwalk Astronomers who bring out their telescopes to show the public what it’s about…if you’re near a college (even JC’s) there could be a small telescope that offers viewing sometimes. There are magazines which should be available at larger libraries which can help people explore the subject more.
It makes one realize how small and insignificant we are, in the total scheme of things.