Astro-Image of the Day: More (and bigger) images of the newly discovered alien world

[mckitterick]

So yesterday, NASA released the first direct photograph of an alien world (see my WOW! post from last night). Turns out one can download a variety of huge, massive versions of the original photograph here - from before scientists identified the planet, Fomalhaut b (could it be Fomalhaut 2 from LeGuin's Rocannon's World?):


Click the image to see the images.

As I wrote in response to a comment yesterday, seeing a photograph of an alien world feels like we're living in the future, or we've pulled aside the curtains of the world that we didn't even know were there, shrouding reality and limiting our sense of the universe. There is no greater pleasure in life than those moments of discovery, of grasping the what-ness of things. Yeah. This is why my post was all Wow!

Wow,
Chris

Comments

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

That is so AWESOME!

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

This is the time for which that term was created. I use "awesome" a lot for mundane things, even for sarcasm. But this is truly full of awe, awe-inspiring.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... perhaps you wouldn't be so ecstatic if you had read your Lovecraft, sir!!!

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

:-D

Cthugha appreciates your honoring its home world.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

My brother sent me this image with the subject line, "Barad-Dur Update."

It does rather look like the Eye of Sauron, doesn't it?

[avylou.livejournal.com]

Yes! I kept wondering why no-one was mentioning the big eye in the sky! Kinda creeped me out, in the middle of being all awed and stuff.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, it's looking for the Ring. Fortunate, that is, unless you happen to be carrying it around with you.