• more about #galaxies
    SpammerOvTheGods: Once again, I'd like to thank all the religious nuts who held mankind back for millenia. We could be out there by now!!!! #@! more »
    Roklimber: Along with VISTA, there's another new telescope, named WISE. NASA launches infrared telescope to scan entire sky [edition.cnn.com] NASA launched a n... more »
    Roklimber: "the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (ViSTA) just started up" Let's hope it won't be like that other VISTA we know about... more »
    stevok: Love the Hubble Deep Field Pics. Here's an animated flythrough of the Ultra Deep Field more »
    Hahaue: I'm just... I'm speechless. There are no words for the sheer beauty of that image, just as there are no words for the crushing terror when you try to ... more »
    acrobatic rabbit: i want to go to there. more »
    rikarus: wow amazing and the scale of things are beyond comprehension...amazing more »
    Kitradu: I'm glad I'm among this crowd on io9...it boggles my mind and saddens me deeply that there are people who could look at this image and be all "so what... more »
    burlybax: This photo makes the think of the MIB marble scenes. Awesome. more »
    Darklighter: I wholly approve of more io9/Bad Astronomy crossover. more »
    shaunmcilroy: Turn your head to the left and it looks like Jon Pertwees head from the old credits to Doctor Who. more »
    Malloc: The 4.6Mpixel version from the Bad Astronomy Blog makes for a great wallpaper with a bit of photoshop cleanup. Great for when you need a reminder for ... more »
    enderwiggin13: There's billions and billions of stars, billions and billions of specks... more »
    icelight: Oh #spaceporn posts. How efficiently you come up with new wallpapers for me. more »
    Daveinva: I want to go to there. #space more »
    Bigdamnhero: Wow. Gorgeous. I'm always changing out my wallpaper cause of these. #space more »
    crashedpc - Haifisch: These pictures always remind me of eyeballs. #space more »
    phoenix: This image makes me feel funny. In a fantastic way. <3 #space more »
    strideo: This will look great as the desktop wallpaper on my new 1036800 by 777600 lcd monitor. #space more »
    Roklimber: Mamma-Q to baby-Q: see, darling, this is what happens when you spill the milk all over the floor. #space more »
  • #spaceporn

    The Secret Stars At The Heart Of The Flame Nebula — Revealed!

    More proof we're living in a golden age for space images: Another new telescope, the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (ViSTA) just started up, and already we have some gorgeous images. Click through to see a couple more. More »
  • #spaceporn

    People In These Galaxies May Have Pointed Their Telescopes At The Big Bang

    The Hubble Space Telescope's newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 took the deepest image of the universe ever in infrared light. The reddest and faintest galaxies date from just 600 million years after the Big Bang. More »
  • #spaceporn

    The Stormy Heart Of The Pinwheel Galaxy

    This area near the core of the Pinwheel Galaxy turns out to be bursting with newborn stars, some only a few million years old. And there are about 60 supernova remnants, showing the full stellar life-cycle. [Hubble via Wired]
  • #spaceporn

    The Ultimate Space Porn: A 648 Megapixel Image Of Our Galaxy

    Physicist Axel Mellinger pieced together this image of the night sky out of 3,000 individual images. Mellinger traveled 26,000 miles, taking images in South Africa, Texas and Michigan, then added data from two space probes. Yes, it's hardcore. More »
  • #spaceporn

    Two Black Holes Enter, One Black Hole Leaves!

    The meeting of two black holes in the galaxy NGC 6240 started 30 million years ago, but the ending was known from the beginning: in the end, there can only be one super-massive black hole. [Chandra Observatory]
  • #spaceporn

    Dwarf Galaxy On Our Doorstep Pulsates With Fascinating Beauty

    Here's our best view ever of Barnard's Galaxy, a dwarf galaxy just 1.6 million light years away, courtesy of the European Southern Observatory's Chilean telescope. Those red bubbles are areas of intense star formation, marked by hot hydrogen. [via BadAstronomer]
  • #spaceporn

    The Center Of The Milky Way Galaxy Shows The Birth And Death Of Suns

    The center of our galaxy shines in greater detail than ever before, in this new composite image from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory. (Click to enlarge.) The whole gamut of stellar evolution is here, from bright young stars to black holes. More »
  • #spaceporn

    Dying Stars, Soaring Nebulas And Clashing Galaxies Have Never Been Brighter

    A butterfly-shaped nebula, NGC 6302, surrounds a dying star. It's just one of four brain-shattering images from the new wide-field camera aboard the upgraded Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble's back in business, baby! Click through for the rest. More »
  • #spaceporn

    Andromeda Surrounded By The Remains Of The Dwarf Galaxies It's Killed

    Our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy may look benign, but it's really a massive cannibal, sitting surrounded by the undigested remnants of the galaxies it's eaten. European scientists have mapped the galaxy anew, and found stars that came from elsewhere. More »
  • #spaceporn

    One Galaxy Smashes Into Four Others At 2 Million Miles Per Hour

    Stephan's Quintet sounds like the name of a nice jazz group, but this galactic cluster, discovered 250 years ago, is actually one galaxy passing through four others at nearly 2 million miles per hour. Hence the long tails. [Chandra Observatory]
  • #spaceporn

    What Makes Young Galaxies Stop Growing?

    Eventually a galaxy has to grow up and settle down, and stop throwing superheated gas around all over the place. And now astrophysicists have figured out how the glowing "superblobs" around galaxies help to make this happen. More »
  • #spaceporn

    Let's Hope This Giant Galaxy Doesn't Come And Kick Our Asses

    Centaurus A not only has a terrifying name, it's our nearest "giant galaxy," only 13 million light years away. Its superluminous central area comes from a supermassive black hole, and it's already swallowing a neighboring spiral galaxy. How long before it comes and pwns us? More »
  • #spaceporn

    This Sparkling Galaxy Hides A Stellar Secret

    This spiral galaxy, NGC 2841, is helping NASA solve a huge mystery: why do galaxies look so smooth, with such an even distribution of stars? More »
  • #spaceporn

    How Many Advanced Civilizations Can You See In This Picture?

    The amount of detail in this image of galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745 is astounding — the unprecedented collision of four separate galaxies, it's one of the most complex galaxy clusters ever seen. [Hubble]
  • #spaceporn

    A Wounded Galaxy Sings With Light

    Another galaxy smashed through the heart of the Cartwheel Galaxy 100 million years ago, and today the Cartwheel remains one of the most powerful UV-emitting galaxies near us, as that blue outer ring shows. More »
  • #spaceporn

    Sloan Sky Survey Helps You Sail Through the Universe, Futurama-Style

    One of the greatest moments in the animated series Futuruma comes in "Godfellas" when Bender is sailing through the universe with no way of stopping his flight. That's basically what the Sloan Digital Sky Survey allows you to do: travel three-dimensionally billions of light years. Five terabytes of data hold 217 million individual objects, including 800,000 galaxies. Hop onto the sarcastic metal starship and see the universe as you were meant to, including a gallery of our favorite watering-holes, after the jump. More »
  • #spaceporn

    This Beautiful Galaxy Is Shrouded In Death

    The Pinwheel galaxy shimmers with life, but it's surrounded by death. Those red and blue areas surrounding the galaxy are devoid of organics, otherwise known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which scientists believe are the building blocks of life, this new photo from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows. These "organics" diminish towards the outer portion of the galaxy, and then quickly drop off to nothing at the outer rim, destroyed by harsh radiation from stars. Click through to see a sunrise as photographed from the International Space Station. More »
  • #spaceporn

    A Galaxy Unwinds, 140,000 Light Years From Its Core

    Baby stars spring to life at the supposedly desolate fringes of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, also known as M83, in this new image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Up to 140,000 light years from the galaxy's center, the outer arms of its "pinwheel" shape seem to flap away from the center like "giant red streamers," and these extended galaxy arms are giving birth to a surprising number of new stars. Want to see another image of the pinwheel galaxy extending itself? More »
  • #spaceporn

    Galaxies' Swan Dive May Give New Clues To Dark Energy

    One day, we'll use images like this waterfall of galaxies to figure out where to refuel our ships with dark energy. That's because this computer simulation of millions of galaxies flowing towards the red zone, the area with the highest mass, gives some clues to the location and nature of dark energy and dark matter. The image shows a "snapshot" of galaxies in the process of forming large-scale structures, 10 billion years ago. Click through for details. More »
  • #spaceporn

    Mice In Space!

    Two galaxies smash into each other — and extreme cuteness results! These galaxies, in the process of colliding, have created "tails" of gas and baby stars that make them look like little mice. Doing a little mouse do-si-do. They're in the constellation of Coma Berenices 300 million light-years away, and scientists believe they will eventually merge into another one of those mega-galaxies. Click through to watch an animated movie of the space mice dancing and then joining together. More »