Einstein Ring

[YosemiteSam]

This is just plain awesome.

Explanation: What's large and blue and can wrap itself around an entire galaxy? A gravitational lens mirage. Pictured above, the gravity of a luminous red galaxy (LRG) has gravitationally distorted the light from a much more distant blue galaxy. More typically, such light bending results in two discernible images of the distant galaxy, but here the lens alignment is so precise that the background galaxy is distorted into a horseshoe -- a nearly complete ring. Since such a lensing effect was generally predicted in some detail by Albert Einstein over 70 years ago, rings like this are now known as Einstein Rings. Although LRG 3-757 was discovered in 2007 in data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the image shown above is a follow-up observation taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3. Strong gravitational lenses like LRG 3-757 are more than oddities -- their multiple properties allow astronomers to determine the mass and dark matter content of the foreground galaxy lenses.​

 

[ScipioCowboy]

So it's one of the less common blue galaxies.

 

[Phoenix]

Yes indeed. Today's APOD. Saw it already

 

[YosemiteSam]

Yes indeed. Today's APOD. Saw it already

Yep, it's like morning coffee.

 

[Meat-O-Rama]

Spending a few seconds really contemplating that picture and what it truly represents is just mind numbing. To think of how small we are...

 

[CliffnDallas]

It's the Celestral Temple!

 

[JonJon]

That is so awesome. It would be even more awesome if it were a real celestial body surrounding an entire galaxy... I love me some astrolnomy.

 

[SaltwaterServr]

Spending a few seconds really contemplating that picture and what it truly represents is just mind numbing. To think of how small we are...

Try this one on for size. We've got what, almost 3000 exoplanets discovered? All inside one itty bitty part of space? Now take a look at 10,000+ galaxies with, at minimum, millions/billions of stars each. Click the image to open it in another window, then click that image again to blow it up to full size.

There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand in all of Earth's deserts and beaches combined. Let that one stew in your noodle for awhile.

 

[YosemiteSam]

There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand in all of Earth's deserts and beaches combined. Let that one stew in your noodle for awhile.

The Sahara desert is 3,600,000 square miles. There are sand dunes that are in excess of 1,000 feet deep/tall. Granted not all of the Sahara is sand dunes, but we've all seen these images of the Sahara. That's a lot of grains of sand!

...and some people say the chances of life somewhere besides Earth are nil. Ha!