Space is cool

Thanks to the folks at Space.com and Hubble, the best images from the telescope were released today.    I thought these were freaking amazing.  

"Pillars of Creation?

Undersea corral? Enchanted castles? Space serpents? On April 1, 1995, Hubble snapped this image of pillar-like structures in the Eagle nebula. These eerie, dark pillar-like structures are columns of cool, interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that serve as incubators for new stars.

Credit: Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University), and NASA/ESA

There are a lot of really cool images here.  This next one is another favorite. 

Crowning Jewel: The Cone Nebula

Resembling a nightmarish beast rearing its head from a crimson sea, this celestial object is actually just a pillar of gas and dust. Called the Cone Nebula (in NGC 2264) - so named because in ground-based images it has a conical shape - this monstrous pillar resides in a turbulent star-forming region. This picture, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, on May 11, 2002, shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the Cone, a height that equals 23 million roundtrips to the Moon. The entire pillar is seven light-years long.

Image Credit: NASA, Holland Ford (JHU), the ACS Science Team and ESA

All of the images are absolutely stunning.  Makes you think about how small and insignificant Earth is on the galactic scale.  Stars are being born and dying all over the universe.   And I wonder why it's so hard to do my laundry and go to the grocery store on a regular basis.