I'm really sorry I that I haven't had the time or the energy to comment on this thread before, because there are some really splendid images here!
I like the dreamy quality of Christoph Pütz's "Jupiter over the Alps", where the "boundary" between the sky and the Earth seems to disappear, so that the Earth and the sky seem to be aspects of the same thing. And that's exactly what they are, of course!
I love Gilles Chapdelaine's image. It looks like a giant red cosmic serpent with only one functioning red eye, focusing on a blue tidbit to the left of it that it might want to swallow!
I love the details of Manuel Jimenez's "M81 M82 Mosaic". The sky is full of foreground dust clouds from the Milky Way and streams of gas and stars that have probably been drawn out of M81 and M82, particularly M81. There are blue patches of star formation in the gas streams to the upper right and lower right of M81. I like to see how the image brings out the distorted shape of M82 and its interesting color profile. We have all seen the huge billowing clouds of red ionized gas streaming out of M82, and most of us recognize the pale aqua color of the "body" of M82. This picture brings out the brown color of dust close to the fountains of red-glowing gas.
I find Ajay Talwar's image extremely beautiful. For me as a northerner, it is fun to see the crescent Moon "lying down" "like a boat sailing the skies". It never looks that way round where I live. I also find the architecture of the terrestrial buildings amazingly beautiful.
It's fun to be reminded of the amazing star formation that is going on "below" (south of?) the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Thank you, Rich Bowden.
Stephane Vetter, I just love your "Milky Way over the Matterhorn" image! The Matterhorn looks so beautiful and striking, the image is so well-composed, the sky is wonderful, and your annotated image is just perfect!
Micke Woxberg, you must be a Swede, right? I love your image. The tall pine trees with their red trunks and green crowns are so mighty, forming a roof through which the sky is peeking through. The sky is velvety blue and just peppered with stars, and the Milky Way is aglow with soft white light. And then that bright meteor seems to say that you can wish upon a star, and maybe your wish will come true!
Leonardo Orazi, those clusters are M46 and M47, aren't they? I can never remember which cluster is which, but really enjoy seeing them photographed together and looking so good. The rich cluster with the older stars, the one on the right, contains a planetary nebula which is clearly visible in your image. I'm not sure if the planetary nebula is really a member of the cluster or perhaps a background or a foreground object, but it doesn't matter. The picture looks great anyway!
Ladislav Kamarád, I completely love your image!
It's fantastic to see the starry sky so crystal clear and so brilliantly full of red nebulae and bluish star fields inscribed with the mysterious black calligraphy of tortuous filaments of cosmic dust. It is equally amazing to see how the starscape is suddenly just extinguished and replaced with a layered, luminous, multicolored fog, glowing in red and yellow among large sheets of misty gray. Amazing!!!
Bernard Miller, your image is one of several of the NGC 2264 region in this thread. All the images are beautiful, but yours bring out qualities that I have not seen before. I particularly like the delicate mostly vertical sheets of multicolored gas and dust of different ionization slightly to the upper right in your image.
Luis Argerich, that's a truly fantastic portrait of the pink Belt of Venus on the opposite side of the setting or the rising Sun. And look at that super-blue Earth shadow!!!
Werner Probst, the largest version of your Pleiades image is just stunningly beautiful!!!
Wolfgang Promper, that's a very fine image of flocculent spiral galaxy M63, too. I've always thought that the small ring-like structure near the center is almost "cute", whereas the large straight dark dust feature in the outer disk to the lower left of the galaxy's center looks almost threatening!
There are so many other images here that are just great. So thank you, all of you, for submitting your images here!
Ann
