Sunday, November 30, 2008

Life on Earth got you down? Look up... way up

Unbeknownst to me, my sister joined a space program and is now sending me photographs taken by the Hubble space telescope.

And she was always such a home body.

Here are two more:


The Ant Nebula, a cloud of dust and gas whose technical name is Mz3, resembles an ant when observed using ground-based telescopes...  The nebula lies within our galaxy between 3,000 and 6,000 light years from Earth.


This is Nebula NGC 2392, called 'Eskimo' because it looks like a face surrounded by a furry hood.  The hood is, in fact, a ring of comet-shaped objects flying away from a dying star.  Eskimo is 5,000 light years from Earth.

We have Eskimo or Inuit people in Canada but I don't see a resemblance. Of course, the star is a long way off.

Link to her first image here.

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4 comments:

  1. BarbaraNovember 30, 2008 at 2:41 PM

    Outstanding images! And humbling!

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  2. bobbieNovember 30, 2008 at 3:56 PM

    Very beautiful. Hard to imagine from way down here.

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  3. Mystic ThistleDecember 2, 2008 at 7:41 AM

    Images like these bring me comfort somehow. There are just awe-inspiring, so beyond...I just love the way they make me feel. What a neat sister she must be.

    ReplyDelete
  4. G. HarrisonDecember 2, 2008 at 8:31 AM

    she is a neat sister, christy.

    cheers,

    gord h.

    ReplyDelete