Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2008

1. Johnny Cat
   December 17th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

   I like "The Mote In Sauron's Eye"...clever. Interesting pick for number 1.

2. Edward
   December 17th, 2008 at 1:42 pm

   Phil's passion, breadth of knowledge and humanity will make him an Internet icon for as long as he cares to blog.

3. Sid Morrison
   December 17th, 2008 at 3:09 pm

   My big problem with most astronomy pictures is that they are essentially fakes. NASA (and astronomers in general for that matter) were masters of photoshopping before there was even a Photoshop. While the basics of an image may be factual, the stuff the space and astronomy industry (and it is an industry) puts out for public consumption is VERY HIGHLY enhanced/sharpened/colorized/etc. to make it much more exciting to the public, i.e. both taxpayers and politicians controlling the purse strings.

   So, unfortunately, you can't really have much faith in any of the publicly released images. No doubt that good research is being done, but everything is so tinkered with by graphic artists it's not really science anymore. The real (more raw) scientifically valid images (and they exist) don't frequently see the light of day because they have a lot less WOW factor for people weaned on Star Wars, Star Trek, and the like.

4. ALLAH AKBAR
   December 17th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

   This is the work of the Shatan! Allah be praised to destroy the kaffir telescope!

5. Ben G.
   December 17th, 2008 at 5:03 pm

   I love this pic. It makes you realize how big the univers is.

6. Glutnix
   December 17th, 2008 at 9:26 pm

   NGC 7331 backwards is 1337 CGN... now we're talking

7. ted
   December 18th, 2008 at 6:16 am

   Shopped!

8. liphttam1
   December 19th, 2008 at 7:00 am

   I disagree with alot of them though.

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT