Our Window on the Universe

"The Milky Way Tree" via The Daily Galaxy.

"Our human window on the Universe is terribly small within a stunningly small range of wavelengths. With our eyes we see wavelengths between 0.00004 and 0.00008 of a centimeter (where, not so oddly, the Sun and stars emit most of their energy). The human visual spectrum from violet to red is but one octave on an imaginary electromagnetic piano with a keyboard hundreds of kilometers long." -- James Kaler, astronomer and author of Heaven's Touch: From Killer Stars to the Seeds of Life, How We Are Connected to the Universe. Read Chapter 1 [PDF].

Click image to enlarge to 4,299 × 3,490 pixels, file size: 8.93 MB, JPEG.

This image of Messier 82 is a composite of Chandra, HST and Spitzer images. X-ray data recorded by Chandra appears in blue; infrared light recorded by Spitzer appears in red; Hubble's observations of hydrogen emission appear in orange, and the bluest visible light appears in yellow-green. -- Wikipedia

In the infrared light, M82 is the brightest galaxy in the sky; it exhibits a so-called infrared excess, being much brighter at infrared wavelengths than in the visible part of the spectrum. -- The Daily Galaxy