This picture is dubbed the “Hubble deep field.” It was taken in January 1996 by the Hubble space telescope. The HST was pointed at a dim point in the sky and focused on that point for many days to reveal the picture above. This is the deepest optical image ever taken. And my favorite pic too!
Looking at this picture can give you an understanding of how big the Universe really is. The point in the sky where this image was derived from is about the size of a pencil dot on a piece of paper held at arms length! Multiply this image millions of times over and you get an idea of what a lil
chunk of the Universe looked like 4 billion years ago, when the earth was forming (although some faint parts of the image go back to when the Universe was just 1 billion years old!). Yet the Universe has expanded so much since this photo.
The Universe is just so big that anything you can imagine to possibly exist probably does! And considering that each one of the galaxies has say a billion stars, you start to realize how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. Every time I look at this photo my mind wonders in fascination at it all. It’s like I’ve become a kid again and am exploring the toy store.
We use mathematical formulas to explain the behavior of the Universe, but nobody has ever been able to explain the machinery behind it all (like say a particle splits comes back together and emits a photon, nobody can explain exactly what drives this but we can use QM to explain the behavior - statistically predict it).
Looking at this you must wonder if there really is a god. It’s a philosophical question I suppose. And if there is one why would he pay any attention to this insignificant corner of our lil Milky Way galaxy. Hmmph!
This is my favorite picture. I don’t think I need to go into details.
Yer pal,
Satan
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Silo posted this question over at FFF also, and I’ll give the same answer.
When I saw the thread title, I said to myself, before even opening it, “If he’s talking about photographs, I’d have to say the Hubble Deep Field.” Imagine my surprise when I saw his OP! Pretty funny.
I first saw the Deep Field photo in Carl Sagan’s book, “Pale Blue Dot,” and it blew my mind. I’ve been an amateur astronomer for a while, and this pic just captures everything that is absolutely staggering about the Universe, whether you’re a theist, nontheist, or other.
I downloaded it from the Hubble Heritage page, had my wife print it out at her previous workplace on their hi-res printer, and affix it to a piece of foamcore used for architectural models. It’s now sitting on my desk at work.
I’m not sure paintings count as pictures. My favorite painting is quite different from my favorite picture. Of course there is a picture of the Mona Lisa, taken at the louve, that I quite like.
One of my favorite pictures is this. I have too many to list.
I can’t find it anywhere on the Web, but my favourite is Gabrielle et Jean, by Renoir. My dad bought a print of it at the Louvre when he went to Paris, and I could stare at it for hours. But I haven’t been able to find a print for myself anywhere, not even on the Louvre website.
