Show us your favorite space photos

[RizzoTheRat]

Looking at the Space Engine thread, I thought surely the real universe can do better than that, so what are your favourite space photos?

 

This one from Cassini has been my desktop for a while, we're the little pale spec just below the rings on the right hand side

(best viewed full size, we don't even show up on the picture at this scale :D)

Then there's Earthrise form Apollo 8

 

and the beautiful Pillars of Creation from hubble

Edited February 10, 2016 by RizzoTheRat

[Evanitis]

I could not resist.

[Motokid600]

These photos of Io are what inspired me to take up astronomy.

[RizzoTheRat]

@Evanitishas just accidentally staged when he didn't mean to and stranded Jeb somewhere

 

Where are those @Motokid600?   They look very similar to hot springs.

[Motokid600]

11 minutes ago, RizzoTheRat said:

 

Where are those @Motokid600?   They look very similar to hot springs.

I couldn't tell you exactly where on Io, but I believe these were taken by either Voyager 1 or 2. I first saw them in the documentary "The Planets." And I've been obsessed with alien landscapes ever since . The thought that Io's typography changes as rapidly as our weather here paints a hell of a picture.

[cubinator]

12 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

"From this distant vantage point the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

[RizzoTheRat]

Do you find yourself reading that in Sagans voice?  I know I do

I went to a talk by Carolyn Porco, the imaging lead for Cassini, a few years back, and she said this picture was inspired by the Pale Blue Dot one. 

[cubinator]

5 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

Do you find yourself reading that in Sagans voice?  I know I do

How could I read it in any other voice? Sagan says it the best.

[StrandedonEarth]

On 2/10/2016 at 6:50 AM, RizzoTheRat said:

This one from Cassini has been my desktop for a while, we're the little pale spec just below the rings on the right hand side

And I now have a new desktop pic, thanks

This was my desktop for a couple of years:

[KerbonautInTraining]

From Apollo 11 in earth orbit

[mikeman7918]

These are probably my two favorite space photos of all time: