Go, NASA


This photo of the “Sombrero Galaxy” was taken from the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s called the Sombrero Galaxy because the technician to first view the photo was eating a fiesta burrito from Taco Bell.

6 comments

  1. Mark, believe it or not, the Guitar Nebula is not faked. It’s created by a neutron star plowing through a dense region of gas- kind of like a boat wake.

  2. Dennis,
    I know the guitar nebula is for real. The guy who discovered it works down the stairs from me! :)
    I was referring to the “photo” of the sombrero glaxy, which clearly is not a photo, though there really is such a glaxy.

  3. FYI everyone – I downloaded this from Yahoo, which was saying it was a photo from the Hubble space telescope. It’s not quite as tricked as out the space illustration things I’ve seen so I’m inclined to believe it’s the real deal.

  4. I stand corrected. I looked into it a bit, and this is indeed real photographic material. Unbelievable! I also figured out what fooled me at first: this is a composite image, made to look so real by expertly superimposing several other images (real telescope photos never look like this — they capture a particular range of wavelengths and produce what is, essentially, a grey-scale map of the intensities of the light in that “band” across the field of view). Still, it’s just awesome.

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