The sharpest image ever taken of the spiral galaxy M81

Its a picture taken by the Hubble space telescope. The sharpest image ever taken of the large "grand design" spiral galaxy M81 was released 9. June 2007 at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. A spiral-shaped system of stars, dust, and gas clouds, the galaxy's arms wind all the way down into the nucleus. Though the galaxy is located 11.6 million light-years away, the Hubble Space Telescope's view is so sharp that it can resolve individual stars, along with open star clusters, globular star clusters, and even glowing regions of fluorescent gas. The Hubble data was taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2004 through 2006. This color composite was assembled from images taken in blue, visible, and infrared light.

Full Size Image

Warning! Massive file! 22620x15200p (706mb)

Spiral Galaxy M81 (706MB)

Click here for smaller version of the same picture (6.2 MB)

[edit on 3-12-2007 by Enceladus]

Absolutely mesmerizing.

I could stare at this for hours and hours. The center of the galaxy is so bright it even hurt my eyes a little bit.

Fantastic find

How anyone could think Earth is the only inhabitated planet is far beyond me.

[edit on 3-12-2007 by ben420]

wow! that's a fantastic picture. I've never seen a picture like that before. not even in my astronomy class. thank you!!!

Amazing photograph!
Thats going on my desktop right now.

How can anyone think we are alone in the universe?

Starred..

I'm going to add it to my list of..

"PICTURES TO LOOK AT IF YOU THINK YOU'RE IMPORTANT"

I hope some aliens have got pics like this of ours so we can do a swap.

Whoa.
Absolutly amazing!
Star for you, pal!

Awesomely beautiful. The grandeur of the universe can be overwhelming.

Now think of the fact that 99.99999% of the non-M81 objects you see in the image are other galaxies.

nice on the 700 meg tiff! (downloading now)
will make for a nice look-see at 1:1.

thanks!

Wow. That is awesome.
I wonder what it would look like hooking it up to the big screen TV?



[edit on 3-12-2007 by greeneyedleo]

hmmmm

Look at this...found in the lower right hand corner


here (just enlarged - no edit):

Some more up close images....very cool things out there





[edit on 3-12-2007 by greeneyedleo]

Well, I looked pretty close at that picture, and I didn't see any E.T.s in it anywhere. Either you got better eyes than I do, or a more vivid imagination.

[edit on 3-12-2007 by Nohup]

This makes you feel great to be alive. Great post Enceladus.

Flag it folks! 4 flags is pitiful and it will never get on the main page.

I like! It's so humbling seeing something like that. We are so tiny it's unbelievable.

There has to be millions, billions maybe more other civilizations out there. and hear we are, stuck on this tiny little grain of sand arguing over bits of the grain of sand and the black stuff inside it. It's quite sad really

I pity such a close minded individual.

Assuming that Earth is the only inhabitated planet out of trillions of planets is extremely arrogant. But I value your opinion, no matter how narrow minded.

Edited to fix those pesky grammar errors

[edit on 3-12-2007 by ben420]

My computer was friggin smoking after loading this MOFO

does anyone have any idea what this could be??

Can't wait till I get the big one downloaded. These kinds of pictures are the reason I want to be an astronomer. It just makes you feel so insignificant when you consider the scale of it. Kinda like the thing in the Hitchkikers Guide, the Total Perspective Vortex.

reply to post by greeneyedleo

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OMG! It's a speeding UFO!

Seriously, maybe it's a nebula with remnants of a supernova. When that thing went off, there was a jet of matter ejected.

reply to post by buddhasystem

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LOL!
Well, I wasnt really thinking that. LOL

I dont know a lot about all the space matter out there. I just thought it was a cool thing floating around in space!