Astronomy Picture of the Day

'Not yet in circulation so far as I know, but it ought to be,' writes an informant, 'if only for the coyness of the official description which suggests that this image "stimulates the human imagination." Perhaps the person who has been allocated the task of putting these pictures and narratives together every day is getting bored and is sending a message to the people who are visiting the site, or to his boss, to indicate that it is now time to put him on other duties ... or maybe someone at NASA really does have a sense of humor!'

In any case, the photo is real, cropped from a larger image of the Carina Nebula snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope. The humorless Dave Barry says it's further proof the end is nigh ... not that we disagree.

[Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA]