science from the top ten astronomy pictures of

science:

From the Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2008 comes this spectacular picture (yes picture, not rendering) of spiral galaxy NGC7331, 50 million light years away.  The detail in the photo is staggering and every little bit is beautiful.  Here is the 3000 pixel wide ‘reduced’ version and for the insane, this page has uncompressed 4000 pixel wide images up to 67 meg in size.

The other top photos of the year are of course worth checking out as well.

(Nothing to add, it’s just plain beautiful.)