A Deeper Level of Explanation

Thoughtful, balanced words of a foremost scientist.

Image of the Abell Cluster of Galaxies

My Heart Sings

Oh, oh, OH my heart sings knowing that the Universe has such wondrous wonders in it.

Hubble Heritage Team — Interacting Galaxies Arp 194

Coronal Rain

Amazing to watch full-screen . . .

Extraordinary Vision

Cosmic photography soothes my savage soul in times of turmoil.

This is the Tulip Nebula located toward the constellation of Cygnus the Swan, which was loosely interpreted in the previous post's painting. Below is a composite image of interstellar gas and dust, mapping star powered emissions from ultraviolet radiation — ionizing sulfur, hydrogen and oxygen atoms into red, green and blue colors.

This is a beautiful universe, made even more beautiful with the extraordinary vision of humankind.

© Michael Joner-David Laney-Robert Gendler — Tulip Nebula

Reminiscent of Frank Kelly Freas

Green is a rare color for astrophotography, but when the image results from an infrared exposure, all bets are off, with colors sometimes assigned to specific gases or elements or what have you, for scientific clarification.

This fantabulous infrared image shows the M17 Nebula (the brightest area) and heated dust structures associated with the nebula. The fascinating dark streaks are likely ripples of star formation — and are to me, with the rest of the image, very reminiscent of a Frank Kelly Freas illustration, coloration and all. I expect to see one of his trademark spaceships blazing across the foreground and a semi-hidden image of a sci-fi character in the background.

Spitzer Telescope — M17 Nebula — ca 2010

Cataclysmic Event

This is an image of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant — a composite of images in infrared, visible and x-ray wavelengths.

Cassiopeia A supernova remnant

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Oliver Krause (Steward Observatory)

To think that such a cataclysmic event could be so beautiful, especially if you were from a planet where your eyes took in all wavelengths of the light spectrum, but hopefully not too near the scene of the crime of this exploded star.

I don't know, if your eyes could see all wavelengths, would you be blinded by the brilliance, or would natural selection cleverly protect you as your species evolved?

Les etoiles du matin

Astronomy at its finest . . .

Sarah Ball Dodson — The Morning Stars — 1910

The Comfort of Wonders

When I'm feeling overwhelmed by life's demands (more often than I care to admit), I turn to nature's astronomical wonders for comfort (and sometimes the old comic books—but ignore that I said that).

The vast universe, as captured by the wonderous Hubble, is my narcotic.

This nebula, IRAS 05437+2502, is a floating mountain of interstellar dust, with some mysterious features still being worked out by astronomers. It looks a bit like I would imagine Mt Olympus to be. The spikes on the stars are artifacts of the photo process, but are oh, so gorgeous.

Alone

I've been wanting to digress from StarHawks, just for a bit, to have a little break from black and white, but I didn't want to disturb the mood too abruptly. So how about this magnificent distant planet view of a galaxy rise, painted by Bob Eggleton, entitled Alone.

Astronomical Entities

Remember the good old days when Pluto was a planet and the moon was a huntress?

I love that Astronomy, our oldest science, is still intermingled with mythology, our oldest spirituality. We still categorize the skies with constellations and their wondrous tales. Astronomical labels are laden with poetic Latin appellations. Astronomy magazines still include mythological tales when they write of the heavenly bodies.

And one of National Geographic's astronomy books included some beautiful mythological graphics, early work by pre-eminent sci-fi artist Michael Whelan, when introducing factoids about our solar system: