Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Terrestrial Critter

One of the blog I subscribe to is NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, and over time I have noticed something about my responses to the pictures they have there, to wit: I am basically bored by pictures of stars or other space objects (galaxies, nebulae, etc.), but vastly interested in pictures that show planets or landscapes.

For instance, boring:


interesting:

Saturn
pretty but boring:

Sharpless 171
fascinating:

Saturn's moon Enceladus as seen from Cassini

intriguing:

red cliffs on Mars

gorgeous:

the Sun

I'm not sure why there is such a disparity in how I view these.

3 comments:

cartaufalous said...

"Pretty but boring" is my favorite.

Sally said...

You seem to like the close-up views.

Anonymous said...

The pretty but boring one actually looks like it could be the surface of a planet to me.

I've always liked learning about the planets more than learning about the bigger stuff, too. Probably because I like to imagine what it would be like for a human to visit there (and walk around looking around) or for some life form to live there.