Train ride over the Glenfinnan Viaduct, Scotland
NGC 289: Swirl in the Southern Sky : About 70 million light-years distant, gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 289 is larger than our own Milky Way. Seen nearly face-on, its bright core and colorful central disk give way to remarkably faint, bluish spiral arms. The extensive arms sweep well over 100 thousand light-years from the galaxy’s center. At the lower right in this sharp, telescopic galaxy portrait the main spiral arm seems to encounter a small, fuzzy elliptical companion galaxy interacting with enormous NGC 289. Of course the spiky stars are in the foreground of the scene. They lie within the Milky Way toward the southern constellation Sculptor. via NASA
seeing these type of pictures is always a crazy reminder that the universe is this unimaginably immense, spread out yet densely populated, existentially stimulating reality that we tend to forget is right above our line of sight every single waking moment of our lives & yet still, we take for granted the opportunity to feel so small
