Monday, December 26, 2022

A very Christmassy image from the stars

 

The Bible tells us:  "The heavens declare the glory of God;  And the firmament shows His handiwork."  When one looks at this image, courtesy of the Webb space telescope, of the Cartwheel Galaxy, I can only nod slowly in awed agreement.  Click the image for a much larger view.



How's that for a star to top the cosmic Christmas tree?

Peter


6 comments:

E. C. said...

As my brother says (gleefully, with gusto), "God likes fire and explosions. If you don't believe me, just look at all the supernovae! If I really want to be like God, well . . ."
To be clear, my brother likes explosions that don't involve life, limb, or destroyed property. Say, target practice involving old ovens and tannerite, or bonfires with discarded Christmas trees.

Ed Bonderenka said...

That's pretty.

Rob said...

I think the word "galaxy" means really really big! How many stars are there in a galaxy?
Beautiful to boot!!

Skyler the Weird said...

Is that the Eye of Sauron Galaxy?

Peter said...

@Skyler: No. The Eye of Sauron is a nebula, not a galaxy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_1-42

Follow the link in the article to read about the Cartwheel Galaxy.

Gerry said...

“When you get the data down, they they don’t look anything like a beautiful color image,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist at STScI, who heads-up a team of 30 expert image manipulators. “They don’t hardly look like anything at all [and] it’s only if you know what to look for that you can appreciate them.”

Forbes Magazine

You wouldn't see the infrared shading as colors with our eyes.