Fantastic image of the central Milky Way
 

9 gigapixel image featuring more than 84 million stars. Amazing thing is that this picture, which would be 30 feet by 23 feet if printed at typical book resolution, covers less than 1% of the sky...

http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/zoomable/

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Article on it, neglected to link earlier: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...ed-detail.html

That is truly awesome and amazing. And ours is only one galaxy out of potentially billions of billions or more. It makes me wish I were a starship captain.

It's strange to me that the universe is so unfathomably large compared to us. I mean, it doesn't have to be. It could be much smaller and we could still exist just as we are. Yet, we don't even know for sure if there is a boundary to the universe. We could live in a universe that was only ... say ... the size of a few solar systems. But, instead, we get a really big one to think about.

I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I guess I'm just going to have to accept it.

FAX

It's nigh on impossible to even grasp just how large it is...

(that's what she said!)

Did you notice that one group of stars just left of center that forms either a question mark or an ankh symbol?

I should like to investigate that place. Looks pretty suspicious.

FAX

There's also a very strange object type thing located top/right. It appears to be an object in motion or something that is emitting an enormous amount of gas. I think I shall call it Romeo 1.

FAX

Loved the first Men in Black movie when the dying alien said "The galaxy is on Orion's belt", or something like that, and they immediately thought in terms of something in the sky, rather than a small vial on a collar around a cat's neck.

GIF fail. :)

Yea I can't be bothered fixing it. Plus Im on my phone lol

Repost but a most worthy one, plus it was a year ago or so. I know the kid that did this, kid is driven and a good guy.

This is what the majority of my life has been the last year or so. Its frikken unbelievable what's up there. I've seen things...

Love love this stuff.

Be sure to zoom all the way in. Look at all those stars, you know there is life out there somewhere looking back at the distant twinkle that is us.

I waved.

FAX

I just wonder if Aliens have to jerk off thier livestock ? Or is that some crap that we just came up with.