Quote from: GT40 on January 04, 2011, 15:27:34 PM

I'm quite sure somewhere on this pic, an e.t. is taking a photo of us. 

Do you mean now now or now when the light of their star/planet reaches us? i.e. if they're 10,000 light years away when looking at us, they'll be long dead when that light reaches us. Or if now now, then we'll be long dead before they see us. My brian hurts 
10,000 ly is peanuts, our galaxy is 100,000 ly across. Our nearest large neigbour galaxy is 2,500,000 ly away.

It was a shortcut, Snowcrash. 

"somewhere on this pic" (somewhere in this part of the sky, now totally different)

"an e.t. is taking a photo of us" (a photo of our galaxy some millions ly ago)

Oops, sorry, I need a little rest. 

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This is an area of sky near Orion's belt with M78 and LDN1622 (a Dark/Absorption Nebulae) in view. Original pic from APOD.



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If you would like to find the original pictures of what I make then check out Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) and Hubble's archive websites. And this link to the forum.
And of course, the Gallery.

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Original picture from APOD of M82. The red hydrogen winds top and bottom are being driven out by many stars within the galaxy. More info of M82.



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These are the names of the 3 blue supergiant stars of Orions Belt. Original pic from APOD. I have flipped and cropped it. On the right of my pic are the Horsehead and Flame nebulae.



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This is an emission nebula, NGC 2237, with an open cluster of stars, NGC2244. Original pic from APOD. More wiki info here.



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This is a mosaic of the far side of the Moon taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Picture from APOD.



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This image was taken from APOD and is a close up of part of IC 410. The larger area of sky also includes IC 405 and M38, see wiki.



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Another lovely nebula. Also from APOD. This one is IC 1396.



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This is a 5 gigapixel mosaic, stitched together from over 37,000 images of the Milky Way. Pic from APOD, cropping by me.



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I found this pic on Russel Croman site and cropped/resized it to make a wallpaper. These colours do actually exist.



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Snowcrash, I love your wallpapers. (is it too early to call you "Snowy", like Data does?) Many of the wallpapers I've made are space-based (galaxies, nebulae, the ISS, etc.), but since I have a three monitor setup, and given the arrangement of my monitors, the images are both HUGE and odd looking, when one just views them. Here's an example:
http://www.geekcavecreations.com/images/Wallpapers/NebulaeAndEarth.jpg

Warning! That image is 3200X2048, and over 1.6MB in size! Dialup users, be advised. (are there any dialup users left in the world?)

You're welcome to call me Snowy.

I limit my wallpaper sizes to 1 monitor. So, generally 1920 x 1080 (16:9) and 1620 x 1050 (16:10).
If people are still on dial-up then they're prob running in 4:3 and sod 'em. 
I appreciate other res's exist, like 1920 x 1200 (16:10) for Freddy's monitor.

A lot of the images I start with are larger than these res's, so if there are any images you like and want in a different res then just ask. I know my way round Photoshop.

Don't ask me to quote the NGC and various other catalogue numbers in the image you posted but I do have them somewhere.

That moon one looks great on my monitor btw Snowcrash 

Well, the big one on the left is the Crab Nebula, so that's M1. the other one is called the Eskimo Nebula, but I can't remember it's NGC number. As it's not a messier object, it hasn't got an "M" classification.

Here's one that I created (just a few moments ago, actually) in Bryce and PSP. It's for a single monitor, 1280x1024:

http://www.geekcavecreations.com/images/Wallpapers/EarthAndMoon.jpg

Note: I actually created the scene last year, but never got around to rendering it until today, when I saw a wallpaper that Data posted. The interesting thing about the render is that both the Earth, and the Moon are to exact scale, with relation to position, size, distance, and even how "oblate" the Earth is (it's "squishing" at the poles). The texture for the Moon is courtesy of NASA, and the texture for the Earth was a Mercator Projection map that I found online. The rest is all me.