This Christmas tree light-like display is an image of one of our galaxy's centers of new star formation, called W3. It was made by Harvard's and NASA's orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory (see here) (named for the great astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar), and the image was downloaded from Alan Boyle's splendid Cosmic Log, on MSNBC.
That is awe-inspiring! Magnificent! Thanks for posting it.
ReplyDeletethanks for the christmas lights, claude! a very merry christmas to you too!
ReplyDeletehaving seen that photo, i'm now feeling a bit less grinchy about not having put up any lights around my place [the pets take the decorations down faster than i can put them up].
ps. i didn't mean to be deliberately obfuscatory, commenting here as one of my alter-identities. it just worked out that way.
ReplyDeleteI hope you had a merry Merry, and a cool Yule.
ReplyDeleteBlessings for your next 13 moons!
p.s. I think it's cool that you've got Smoking Mirrors linked!