From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
Here’s a beautiful image from Nasa released today. Now here’s the science: it shows the tip of the ‘wing’ of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy in this new view from Nasa’s Great Observatories. The SMC is a small galaxy about 200,000 light years away that orbits our own Milky Way spiral galaxy. The spiral galaxy seen in the lower corner is actually behind this nebula. The colours represent wavelengths of light across a broad spectrum. Other distant galaxies located hundreds of millions of light years or more away can be seen sprinkled around the edge of the image.The SMC is one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbours. Photograph: NASA/AFP/Getty Images
It’s nice to remember that we exist as small specks in the middle of this kind of thing every now and again, isn’t it? “All we are/Are stars…”