Oh Star Stuff

The astronomer, Carl Sagan, famously said that there were more stars in our Universe than grains of sand on the Earth's beaches. That idea is hard to fathom until you see images like this of Messier 110.

Messier 110 is one of the many satellite galaxies encircling the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest major galaxy to our own, and is classified as a dwarf elliptical galaxy, meaning that it has a smooth and almost featureless structure. Elliptical galaxies lack arms and notable pockets of star formation — both characteristic features of spiral galaxies. Dwarf ellipticals are quite common in groups and clusters of galaxies, and are often satellites of larger galaxies.

(📷 Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L.Ferrarese et al.)

You're experiencing a bird's-eye view of one of the largest galaxies in our local universe. The scale of this Godzilla-like galaxy is simply unfathomable. Located 232 million light years away, UGC 2885 is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains over a trillion stars. It takes light itself at least 800,000 years just to traverse its width. Think of the countless worlds and creatures that may reside in such a behemoth, perhaps forever out of reach of humanity. (Music Credit: Hammock - "Afraid to Forget" | Credit: NASA, ESA, and B. Holwerda (University of Louisville)

Facing Infinity edit ft. Brian Cox

(Audio clip from Joe Rogan Experience | Music by Tourist)

Did you know...all those beautiful whirling clouds and storms you see on Jupiter are only about 50 km thick. They’re made of ammonia crystals broken up into two different cloud decks. The darker material is thought to be compounds brought up from deeper inside Jupiter, and then change color when they reacted with sunlight. But below those clouds, it’s just hydrogen and helium, all the way down. (Image credit: NASA Juno | Eichstädt / Doran)

"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty." – JOHN MUIR

(📸 credit: Daniel Fleischhacker | @daniel_fleischhacker | daniel-photography.eu)

I'm long overdue sharing the incredible work of Seán Doran. He is a visual artist that has recently been taking NASA images and transforming them into visceral, real-color landscape videos. This is a view of the Meridiani Planum Crater on Mars. Perhaps one of the most underrated channels on YouTube.

(Video © Seán Doran / Data by HiRISE/ NASA / JPL / University of Arizona / Seán Doran | Music © Julianna Barwick - "Garland")

It's the only home we've ever known.

What does it all mean? As we learn more about our place in the cosmos there tends to be a fear that we will lose our sense of meaning. In a recent talk with Sam Harris, theoretical physicist Janna Levin shared how she finds her meaning in the face of an ever complex, infinite universe. I absolutely love her perspective and hope it resonates with you as well.

(Music: Olafur Arnalds -Undir)

Thank you for your endless curiosity Dr. Hawking.

Haters will say it’s fake. STARMAN

"The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs." - Marcus Tullius Cicero This is an incredible view of the recent Geminid meteor shower over Mongolia. (Image Credit & Copyright: Yin Hao)

"What you are basically deep deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself" - Alan Watts Love this poetic take by the philosopher Alan Watts on our inseparable connection to the Universe. 

What a lucky shot! While astrophotographer Fritz Helmut Hemmerich was capturing an image of the Andromeda galaxy, a sand-sized rock from deep space crossed right in front of the camera creating this incredible green streak. Or it was just aliens. 👽

This is not a Van Gogh painting, you're looking at a color-enhanced image of a massive, raging storm in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere. This spectacular image was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft during its ninth close flyby about 6,281 miles from the tops of the clouds of Jupiter. (Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/ Seán Doran)

Bright blue stars scatter the sky over the Paranal Observatory in Chile as the spectacular central region of our Milky Way emerges above the horizon. 

Image credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi