astronomy images.

After reading this month's Discover article about the violent birth of stars (which featured, of course, the Orion Nebula, along with the other notorious nebula Eagle which contains one of the most famous star-forming regions known as the Pillars of Creation), I somehow wound up on this site, which features astronomy pics updated daily. Upon a quick scroll, it would seem it has a photo for every day from today back through 1995. I have been excitedly clicking/downloading/creating folder for my screensaver of various incredible images. Um, wow.

The image above that I discovered is of course Saturn, but unique in the fact it was taken by Cassini after finding itself in the giant planet's shadow, looking back at the eclipsed sun. This is perhaps now the most incredible image I have ever seen (though this standing will likely change soon the more I scroll through these archives, but really, this is quite amazing). This is a view like no other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against the planet, but quite bright when viewed lighted from behind by slightly scattering sunlight. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above.

Perhaps most significant (albeit maybe just to me) is that – far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings – is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.