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My favorite isn't there.

Back in the 1920s Hubble did photographic surveys of the sky with long exposures. Here is what he found. Pick a random spot in the sky. Take a long exposure. Count the stars you can see. Take a magnifying glass. Count the galaxies you can find. With a few obvious exceptions, there will be more galaxies than stars. A lot more. (Obvious exceptions would include things like nebulae that you can't see through to see galaxies behind them.)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubble_ultra_deep_field_hi...

Every light there is a galaxy (okay Like and 7 stars).

I remember seeing that photo when it came out and sort of brushing it off because it wasn't some sweeping nebula. Four years of an astrophysics degree later it nearly brought me to tears just thinking about looking at 10000 galaxies and the full weight of that sight. It's one of those things thats more powerful the more you understand it.

Yeah... it kind of blows my mind.


I find it comforting. You look at that photo and all of a sudden your stupid problems and worries seem laughingly insignificant. It's better than religion.


This one actually gives a bit of a 3rd dimension to space you don't see normally. That's really cool. Man, it looks like a mess out there.


Absolutely. Here's another, more recent one from the upgraded Hubble: http://www.nickcoleman.org/blog/index.cgi/galaxygrains%21201...


Is that photo, by any chance, the background of the COSMOS intro? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/21/Cosmos_a_speci...


Cosmos predates the deep field image by about 20 years... but it really captures the essence of the show pretty well.


And this is the result of pointing the telescope at the darkest, loneliest spot in the sky they could find!


It's like the total perspective vortex but some how completely backward. I remember explaining it as much as possible to my brother; he looked at it for a bit stopped and said

"Well, I have to live forever now."




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