Anniversary Photo

In honor of the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA released some new photos, including the "official anniversary image" seen below:

The picture, called "Celestial Fireworks," is an enhanced image of a star-forming region with the unspectacular name Gum 29, about 20,000 light-years from Earth. Like many of these Hubble photographs, the image is a processed version of readings taken with visible light as well as other wavelengths and then corrected via image software. In other words, if you were to see the original photo of that section of space, it wouldn't look like this. If you were to somehow get near Gum 29, though, and look at it through your spaceship window or viewscreen, it might come close.

And even if it didn't, who would care? You're in a spaceship 20,000 light-years from Earth, which implies that if you don't like the view, you've got the ability to check out someplace else pretty darn quick.