Revealing the Universe - check this out.

[thesummerqueen]

This brings tears to my eyes.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badast...eep-field/

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have created the deepest multi-color* image of the Universe ever taken: the Hubble Extreme Deep Field, a mind-blowing glimpse into the vast stretches of our cosmos.

Hit this link for the full view:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/arc...c1214a.jpg

The variety of galaxies is amazing. Some look like relatively normal spirals and ellipticals, but you can see some that are clearly distorted due to interactions – collisions on a galactic scale! – and others that look like galaxy fragments. These may very well be baby galaxies caught in the act of forming, growing. The most distant objects here are over 13 billion light years away, and we see them when they were only 500 million years old.

In case your head is not asplodey from all this, I’ll note that the faintest objects in this picture are at 31st magnitude: the faintest star you can see with your naked eye is ten billion times brighter.
So, yeah.

I’ll note that the purpose of this and the other deep field images is to look as far away and as far back in time as we can to see what the Universe was like when it was young. The wealth of data and scientific knowledge here cannot be overstated.

But I suspect, in the long run, the importance of this and the other pictures will be their impact on the public consciousness. We humans, our planet, our Sun, our galaxy, are so small as to be impossible to describe on this sort of scale, and that’s a good perspective to have.

But never forget: we figured this out. Our curiosity led us to build bigger and better telescopes, to design computers and mathematics to analyze the images from those devices, and to better understand the Universe we live in.

And I wanted to separate out this bit, because it's the most important.

And it all started with simply looking up. Always look up, every chance you get. There’s a whole Universe out there waiting to be explored.

[Cyberman]

Fascinating stuff. Deeply, deeply moving.

[frankiej]

There is an article on the BBC website about this that I just posted on Facebook.

It is rather cool.

[thesummerqueen]

You're not friends with me on facebook, you moog.

[frankiej]

I am now.

[Welsh cake]

And it all started with simply looking up. Always look up, every chance you get. There’s a whole Universe out there waiting to be explored.

I see nothing.

Just light pollution.

Though street lights are far more useful to us at night as a society than the cosmos in general. ^^

[Annik]

Incredible.

[Jackalope]

I regret that I can only kudos the OP once.

It blows my mind to realize that those distant infant galaxies, which appear so close to one another, are now vast distances apart due to 13 billion years of expansion.

[Cyberman]

I see nothing.

Just light pollution.

Though street lights are far more useful to us at night as a society than the cosmos in general. ^^

Yeah, light pollution's a bitch. It wasn't until that family holiday to Scotland I mentioned the other day that I saw the Milky Way for the first time in my life, though I know where it should be. Incidentally, this is the only galaxy you can observe between meals without ruining your appetite.

I agree that street lighting is an important part of our society, but that doesn't mean that the lights need to be so detrimental to the environment. It's not just to benefit a few inconsiderate astronomers who want the night sky darkened at the expense of everyone else; inefficient and intrusive lighting has a whole raft of side-effect, including the effects on wildlife. Check out the Campaign for Dark Skies (CfDS).

[Rayaan]

I kind of like how many people have totally opposite thoughts about the universe from each other.

There are those who think that the universe is cold, empty, dark, lifeless, wandering asteroids, nothing but light pollution, etc ...

To others, the universe is incredible, astonishing, deeply moving, brilliant, colorful, beautiful, exciting, etc ...