[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Jee (UC Davis) et al.]

[sargon]

Dark matter, schmark matter...

I say, MOND!

[Mike Darancette]

holds the mass of a million billion Suns.

In 1980 Carl Sagan talked of billions and billions of stars. Now it is billions of billions of stars.

[aquila48]

I don’t know what’s more astonishing... to look at pictures such as this strewn with galaxies like pebbles on the ground and realizing how insignificant we are, or... how incredible, that we, insignificant microbes on a grain of sand are capable of capturing this immensity and even attempt at understanding it.

Thanks for all your postings of these awe inspiring pictures, SunkenCiv. They have a way of putting all our earthly troubles and tribulations in the proper perspective.

[KoRn]

"A careful inspection of the image will reveal a nearly vertical galaxy that appears unusually long. That galaxy is actually far in the background and has its image stretched by the gravitational lens action of the massive cluster."

Wow!! That's a profound example of gravitational 'lensing'!

Though it's unlikely any human will ever witness it, I wonder what the night sky from Earth will look like to us when our Milky Way Galaxy collides with the Andromeda Galaxy. I believe they estimate that it will happen in Four Billion or so years.