It takes your breath away or at least gives cause for pause. There are many in the HST library I know but this one has to rate right among the best! Thanks for the post Alan.

Great images from Hubble as always. I'm going to miss him terribly.

BTW, glad to have you back!

This certainly is a spectacular bit of work by the Hubble Telescope astronomers and their teams, and it is one of the many truly stellar examples of good science at the dawn of the early-21st century, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous! :)

However, one might suggest in an highly cynical way that the most spectacular "fireworks" over the past week or so emerged from the mouth of the official spokesperson for the Obama administration's netherworld of goofy science, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who revealed in his interview by Middle Eastern network Al-Jezeera (aired on June 30, 2010) some of the inner secrets and agendas of the Luddites who have seized control of President Obama and his obviously science-challenged mind, where to be specific these are the three objectives of the new NASA vision for space exploration that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is going to implement for President Obama:

(1) "to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math"

(2) "to expand our international relationships"

(3) "to find a way to reach-out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and engineering--science, math, and engineering"

[SOURCE: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/talktojazeera/2010/07/201071122234471970.html ]

And as noted in the interview, of these three objectives the third is perceived by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden as being "perhaps foremost" of President Obama's goals . . .

Later in the interview, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden provided this additional insight into the Luddite universe of the new NASA:

"We're not going to go anywhere beyond low-Earth orbit as a single entity. The United States can't do it. China can't do it. No single nation is gonna go to a place like Mars alone."

And since I sent I sent Alan an email via my Yahoo! account rather than via my apparently considerably more reliable and intelligent Microsoft Live email account, I might as well quote myself and share a few of my observations and thoughts which I certainly hope will inspire Alan to do a much needed "Cosmic Log" update on this patently frightening development in the agenda, purpose, mission, role, and goal of NASA, really . . .

From a silly perspective, this moves NASA to the top of the list of patently goofy stuff that include such things as the Flat Earth Society and the belief held by a related group of science-challenged conspiracy theorists that the NASA Apollo Lunar Missions of the late-1960s and early-1970s were hoaxes created by the Hollywood motion picture industry in elaborate sound stages in the desert . . .

But from the more important and quite serious national and scientific perspective, this is frightening, because it reveals key aspects of the thinking and planning that is happening in the inner chambers of the White House, where the true goals of President Obama and his cadre of advisors have nothing to do with promoting our great nation and pursuing genuine science . . .

In the three objectives, there is no mention of the United States; there is no mention of space exploration; and there is no mention of anything that is even remotely germane to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) . . .

Instead, the three objectives only make a bit of logical sense if viewed as being objectives of the Department of Education and the Department of State . . .

One might expect reasonably that inspiring children to study and to understand science and mathematics is a worthy goal of educators and teachers, and one might expect that our diplomats should want to build stronger international relationships, which might include focusing on improving relationships with dominantly Muslim countries, but what does this have to do with NASA, especially when in the grand scheme of everything one cannot help but suggest that Islam is the National Socialist German Workers' Party of the 21st century?

Really!

And since one of the realities here in the sound isolation studio is that I tend to jump from thought to thought in an often abstrusely convoluted stream of consciousness that James Joyce might have found to be a bit difficult to follow, I shared a few observations with Alan regarding fascinating physics experiments focused on some of the more surprising aspects of boiling water, which without going into too much detail involve the speed at which boiling water freezes and the fact that one can have a bit of exciting but potentially dangerous FUN with the palm of one's hand and the bottom of a thin-walled stainless steel pan which contains boiling water, with the important bit of information being that the bottom of the pan changes from (a) being cool to the touch to (b) being scalding hot (just a tiny bit under 212-degrees Fahrenheit) the instant the water stops boiling, so while it is a fascinating experiment, if your timing is a bit slow by as little as a millisecond, then you get an instant second-degree burn . . .

Once I wandered back on topic, as I am now reading the email after enjoying a much needed cup of very strong coffee, it appears that I only touched base briefly for purposes of making yet another jump, which led to this outstanding and not so entirely unrelated series of thoughts and observations:

Summarizing, it certainly appears that NASA is well on its way to pursuing a patently strange and bizarre vision that is most consistent with the knowledge and understanding of science one might expect from "The Little Rascals", "The Three Stooges", and the "Road Runner", where the general idea coming from the White House is that all NASA needs to do is to make a few orders to the "Acme Corporation" and to have private sector companies assemble the "Acme Rocket Kits", because nobody at NASA actually knows much of anything about science and all that complicated stuff . . .

And since it is virtually impossible for me actually to summarize anything, because all this stuff is so extraordinarily interdependent on so many levels, the truly frightening aspect is based in part on yet another observation, which is that beginning in the mid-1930s Alfred Hitchcock and other motion picture directors did a series of motion pictures that very accurately predicted World War II, with the most notable of these motion pictures being these three classics:

(1) "The 39 Steps" (Directed by Alfred Hitchock) ~ 1935

(2) "Things To Come" (Directed by William Cameron Menzies) ~ 1936

(3) "The Lady Vanishes" (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock) ~ 1938

When one examines the themes of motion pictures at the dawn of the early-21st century and connects a few dots from the perspective of Carl Jung's "Collective Unconscious", it is not so difficult to envision the most obvious of the various possible, imminent futures for our great nation . . .

In other words, the three objectives of the Obama administration for NASA define a frightening harbinger on many levels . . .

And while any reasonable person certainly should expect that it is not necessary to provide a warning label on a Roman Candle stating that no part of the human body ever should be used as a holder for this or any other type of fireworks, several years ago much to my general dismay I became privy to these two apparent facts, for sure:

(1) One of my neighbors (a) never should be allowed to surf the web and (b) is in much greater need of psychiatric counseling than I possibly could have imagined . . .

(2) There is a definite need for this type of warning label in the Netherlands . . .

For sure!

One of the consequences of this unexpected and disturbing epiphany is that it created a new analogy, metaphor, or simile for expressing what only can be described by the phrase "human stupidity in the extreme", which is the best way to characterize the new vision for NASA, which continuing with the analogy has the new quarterback (NASA Administrator Charles Bolden) standing just behind the center (President Obama)--who happens to have a lit Roman Candle stuck somewhere that never should be used to hold a Roman Candle--ready, willing, and able to do something with the football, which is most likely to be as strange and bizarre as it truly is mind-boggling . . .

Mind-boggling!

In the grand scheme of everything, this is a bellwether moment with respect to peering deep inside the inner working, thinking, and scheming of the Obama administration, as well as being the death knell for NASA . . .

And while one can be gracious and imagine that a former Marine and NASA Astronaut might not be so conscious of the importance and date of our foremost national holiday--The Fourth of July--I think that it is no mere coincidence that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden decided to do the Al-Jezeera interview just a few days before the Fourth of July, which makes it all the more disturbing, really . . .

Really!

Just went clicking through the June Space Pics Slideshow...got a great laugh at the very last pic, showing 3 men inside a Soyuz trainer with all the men holding a 'Thumbs Up' to the camera. KNOWING what this means in Russian sign puts a great spin on the pic, something like, "Yeah, we are alright cramped into this tiny ball, so Up Yers Buddy, it is not You stuck in here" And the expression on the Russian Cosmonaut's face shows him to be enjoying the joke greatly!

This is not meant as political dialogue, but I too think the promise Mr. Obama showed, in the early months of his presidency, has badly reversed itself. All too obvious that domestic and international issues have put every other concern squarely in the rear view mirror.

Too bad we are fooled again. Man's only hope, is the realignment of assets and attitudes toward advances in every area of discovery. Maybe next time.