This is the Wired Science space photo of the day for October 26, 2012.

This picture represents a phase of development our sun will go through several billion years from now.  Apparently when stars get to a certain age they go through an expansion and contraction that creates enormous wind and energy. Then they explode. This is the Crab Nebulae,  a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star’s supernova explosion. The blue is the crushed dense core of the exploded star.  That’s the scientific thumbnail if I have gotten it right. Luckily we won’t be around when this happens to our sun!

In addition to the science there’s the art and emotional content of the image. What do you see in this image from space?  Does it look like an elaborate Easter egg from space?  A Christmas gift from the Hubble?

In his poem After Years, Ted Kooser writes about someone leaving him, and the describes the magnitude and ordinariness of that experience with images of a glacier calving, an ancient oak falling, and an old woman looking up from feeding chickens. He then turns to space writing, At the other side/of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times/the size of our own sun exploded/and vanished, leaving a small green spot/on the astronomer’s retina/as he stood on the great open dome/of my heart with no one to tell.*
*for the full version of this amazing poem After Years go to Poemhunter.com

What is happening at the other side of your galaxy?