© NASA The object in the middle of this image, sitting alone within a star-studded cosmos, is a galaxy known as ESO 486-21. ESO 486-21 is a spiral galaxy, albeit with a somewhat irregular and ill-defined structure, located some 30 million light-years from Earth. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed this object while performing a survey — the Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS) — of 50 nearby star-forming galaxies.
… or does this image render you weak at the knees too? It came to my attention via the ubiquitous Twitter where its 124 characters read: During a survey of galaxies, @NASA Hubble telescope spotted a galaxy in the process of forming new stars. Carefree as you please: couldn’t sound more normal, pedestrian, dull even.
Whining whenever possible about the ghastliness of our graceless times, the balm of reflecting on the third side of that coin is a Restorative. If we have the technology to see across 30 million light years, why do we not see what’s on our doorstep? [Just to be clear, the distance of a light year in miles = 5.879 × 1012 or 5.88 trillion]
Last evening’s perfectly vertical cuticle of new moon is about as much as I can fully grasp. The glorious simplicity radiating the exquisite truth that no matter for how much Arlene Foster nobbles the Government to hide past mis-managements, no matter how deeply this caving-in will inform European negotiators’ approach to nailing the UK for every penny, no matter how bizarre grow the brittle effluvia of #Resident Trump, none of it really matters.
We are inconsequential amid the inconceivableness of the universe: thank goodness nothing we do could disrupt the symbiosis of space objects and their relation to one another. Would that we learnt from such an example.
Madeleine Baird Materials 