The space eye of Sauron

When the first image of the black hole, M87*, was released, several memes circulated online that repositioned the photo in different contexts. One of the best known was the one that placed M87* in the center of Sauron's eye as it was displayed in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The photo I present above, however, taken in 2008 by the Hubble Space Telescope is much more reminiscent of the evil eye of Sauron. It represents the debris disk around the star Fomalhaut, a white star in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus approximately 25 light years away. In 2008, an exoplanet was also discovered, Fomalhaut b (also known as Dagon, a perfect name for Halloween parties!), although there are still doubts about its existence (probably it does not exist, at least not yet).
The curiosity about this star is that the protagonist of Stanislaw Lem's Return from the Universe returns to Earth after a space exploration trip right around Fomalhaut: the book is dated 1961, almost fifty years before astronomers discovered clues about the possible existence of Dagon.

Slender Galaxies

The tradition of horror stories is full of hooded characters, but the great success of creepy pasta, short stories, but also animations and illustrations spread online, has led to the success of a particularly disturbing character, Eric Knudsen's Slender Man. And the above shot taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on June 19, 2019 is somewhat reminiscent of that disturbing kidnapper of children. From an astronomical point of view, the image captured a particularly advanced collision of two galaxies.
But as a fan of superhero comics I find that also Mr. Bloom, a Batman's villain recently introduced (2015), could be a very good alter ego of Arp-Madore 2026-424.

Tempest: another great timelapse

Some days ago Nasa published the following incredible photo:

It is an infrared mosaic produced using Hubble's shots and represent the Universe observed by the space telescope. But also from Earth we can observe some spectacular images, like the stars in the sky or the Milky Way. Thursday we see a greattimelapse from Jared Brandon and today I propose you another great timelapse, realized by Randy Halverson (via Universe Today):

I think it could represent the perfect fusion between Earth and Sky, like in this shots from the slideshow of the video:

Thanks also to Annarita Ruberto, who shared the video in Italy.