HubbleSite.org

Quite a tableau of sites today: Outer space is pretty okay with me. Anything that can contain every piece of matter ever is alright in my book, as is anything that can have anything as gorgeous as this:

Oooooh. What is it, you ask? That is the Carina Nebula. For the 17th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope launch, NASA cobbled* a mosaic of 48 images together to display a pretty awesome sight. 48 images from the Hubble telescope is a lot. How big do you think the full-sized photo would be? Pretty big. Big enough that the original image releases on the Hubble site displays a warning, "These images should be downloaded, not viewed through a browser... it may cause your Web browser to lock up, or it may crash your computer." True that. It crashed mine. If you insist, however, be prepared to view a 29566 x 14321 pixel image. It's almost 500 megabytes. A photo. You can get the standard (non-computer-crashing) releases here. Alternately, you could get the full idea of the 500MB photo through this Google Earth-esque zoomable image. It's great. Try zooming in on those hydrogen clouds near the bottom right. Before I move on to some other stuff, here's an interactive Flash movie made by the Hubble guys that outlines some of the more interesting stuff in there, as well as explains the science-y stuff a little better.

Alrighty. While digging up this nebula, I found some others. Not as big or as pretty, but very nice nonetheless. The Eagle Nebula, for example:

Or maybe the Dumbbell Nebula, famous for looking like a summer sky:

Or the Helix nebula, famous for scaring me half to death. You might have seen it online elsewhere, labeled as the Eye of God (all the blue color is oxygen (cold water holds more oxygen, so it looks more blue. Now you know)):

Creepy. You can find some other spectacular Hubble photos here. The Nebulae are my favorite, in case you hadn't guessed. If you want still more astronomical goodness, try NASA's pic of the day here. It's not usually worth it, but who knows; you might find something. When you do, post it in the comments.

*I was going to say "composed", but I like "cobbled" better.