Starship Asterisk*

I was out earlier this evening looking at M31 with my favorite binoculars. The notion that our Milky Way galaxy will merge with Andromeda in about 4 billion years is fascinating. I hope humanity can somehow survive and evolve to be a part of the new Milkomeda or Milkdromeda.

This is such a beautiful wide-field image. I understand that the stellar nursery NGC 7538 in the upper right has the largest protostar yet discovered.

I find it amazing that both Pluto and Triton have interesting recent surface features. Icy cold doesn't necessarily mean dead. I'm looking very forward to the New Horizons imagery of 2014 MU69 on 1 January 2019.

It's the visage of old dapper dead Cthulhu.

Everything in the universe wants to kill us. I wonder if planet Earth could survive this black hole scenario? Maybe there's a minuscule chance we could be ejected before X-rays fried us or tidal forces broke us up into bite size pieces. A rouge Earth flying off with no sunlight, spinning chaotically...

the Lonely Mountain... a massive iceberg?

the beignet nebula. native New Orleanian. mmm… beignets.

fascinating… they appear to be cyanobacteria, specifically Nostoc pruniforme.