Poll: Select the Astronomy Pic of the Week for May 9-15

[owlice]

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Please cast your vote for the best Astronomy Picture of the Week (image and text) for May 9-15.
(Repeated APODs are not included in the poll.)

All images are clickable and link to the original APOD page.

Thank you!
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<- Previous week's poll


Halo of the Cat's Eye, May 9



Large Eruptive Prominence Movie from SDO, May 10
Go to APOD

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Herschel Crater on Mimas of Saturn, May 11



M72: A Globular Cluster of Stars, May 12



The Magnificent Horsehead Nebula, May 13



Iguaçu Starry Night, May 14



The Elusive Jellyfish Nebula, May 15

[owlice]

If anyone would care to share what about an APOD secured his/her vote, I'd be very interested to read it!

For me, voting for an APOD is different from voting for a recently-submitted image, because I have the text to consider when voting for an APOD. One of the criteria for me is "What did I learn from this APOD?" or even better, "Does the image at which I'm looking advance knowledge or have the potential to advance our understanding?"

So though I found each of these images appealing in different ways, my choices really came down to the first three images, especially the second and third, and deciding between the SDO sun image and the Mimas image was very difficult! I think astronomers will learn tons from SDO; its capabilities are amazing!

But I voted for the Mimas image; to see something so far away in such exquisite detail astounds me, and the ability to see such detail will also increase our understanding of our universe (or at least our little corner of it).

[rstevenson]

As usual, I voted for one of the losing images -- M72. (Of course, none of them are losers in a broader sense.)

I always vote for an image of an expanse of stars, if one's available. I spent my youth looking at smudgy, grainy blobs of stars in musty old books, and the current availability of these amazingly detailed images never fails to enthral me. Thinking about what they represent -- tens of thousands, sometimes millions of stars and their possible panetary systems and [not very] possible inhabitants entrances me. And I mean that literally -- more than once I've stared at such an image for a quarter hour or more before remembering I was doing something else.

So keep them globular clusters coming!

Rob

[Hofi]

I voted for #7 because of the colors and the high resolution!