Little Big Universe: Tilt-Shifted Astro Images Make Space Look Tiny

DOFZafP.jpg

Aww, how cute! What an adorable little... nebula?

Although here it may look like it could fit in your hand, the Horsehead Nebula is obviously quite a bit larger - about 1.5 light-years across from "nose" to "mane." But given a

tilt-shift

effect by Imgur.com user

ScienceLlama

, the entire structure takes on the appearance of something tiny -- based purely on our eyes' natural depth-of-field when peering at a small object close up. Usually done with Photoshop filters these days, it's a gimmick, yes... but it works!

The original image was captured in infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope and

released in April 2013

, in celebration of its 23rd anniversary.

Check out more of ScienceLlama's "tiny universe" images below:

[caption id="attachment_107022" align="aligncenter" width="579"]

A tiny Centaurus A[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_107023" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

A tiny Crab Nebula (see original NASA image

here

)[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_107024" align="aligncenter" width="576"]

A tiny Andromeda Galaxy in hydrogen alpha (see original

here

)[/caption]

See these and more on ScienceLlama's Imgur page here

, and follow Science Llama on Twitter

here

.

(H/T to Google+ user Brian Koberlein and fellow Space Community member Warren Isaac. Featured on Reddit.com.)

ADDITION 12/17:

Several of these images (like

this one

) were originally processed by Robert Gendler from Hubble-acquired data, but the attribution was not noted by ScienceLlama. I apologize for the oversight -- see more of Robert's beautiful astrophotography

on his website here.

Another original source was

Adam Block of the Mount Lemmon Sky Center.