I posted this on my main blog, but these are too good to leave off of the pic blog.
After correcting an initial problem with the lens, when the Hubble Space Telescope was first launched in 1990, the floating astro-observatory began to relay back to Earth, incredible snapshots of the "final frontier" it was perusing.
Recently, astronauts voted on the top photographs taken by Hubble, in its 16-year journey so far. Remarking in the article from the Daily Mail, reporter Michael Hanlon says the photos "illustrate that our un iverse is not only deeply strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful."
Hubble Telescope's top ten greatest space photographs. Awesome!!!
The Sombrero Galaxy - 28 million ligh
t years from Earth - was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The dimensions of the galaxy, officially called M104, are asspectacular as its appearance It has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.
The Ant Nebula, a cloud of dust and gas whose technical name is Mz3, resembles an ant when observed using ground-based telescopes... The nebula lies within our galaxy between 3,000 and 6,000 light years from Earth. 
In third place is Nebula NGC 2392, called "Eskimo" because it looks like a face surrounded by a furry hood. The hood is, in fact, a ring of comet-shaped objects flying away from a dying star. Eskimo is 5,000 light years from Earth. 
At four is the Cat's Eye Nebula. 
The Hourglass Nebula, 8,000 light years away, has a "pinched-in-the-middle" look because the winds that shape it are weaker at the centre. 
In sixth place is the Cone Nebula. The part pictured here is 2.5 light years in length (the equivalent of 23 million return trips to the Moon). 
The Perfect Storm, a small region in the Swan Nebula, 5,500 light years away, described as 'a bubbly ocean of hydrogen and small amounts of oxygen, sulphur and other elements'.
Starry Night, so named because it reminded astronomers of the Van Gogh painting. It is a halo of light around a star in the Milky Way. 
The glowering eyes from 114 million light years away are the swirling cores of two merging galaxies called NGC 2207 and IC 2163 in the distant Canis Major constellation.
The Trifid Nebula. A 'stellar nursery', 9,000 light years from here, it is where new stars are being born.
These incredible photos of a White Bengal Tiger named Odin.
Odin is six years old and 10 feet long from tail to nose. Odin lives at a Zoo in Vallejo, California, near San Francisco.
Odin with his British trainer Lee Munro.
Odin was hand-raised at the zoo. And after he was weaned, his British trainer Lee Munro discovered his remarkable skill.
When a lump of meat was thrown into a pool of water, Odin would happily dive in after it."He makes a funny face - and it's actually to close his nostrils to stop the water from going into his nose."
Not all big cats enjoy the water but for Tigers from the hot climate of South-East Asia it's one way to cool down. 
"Plus they hunt in and around water. They're an ambush predator so they wait for prey to come down to the water." 
"When you actually see him dive underwater he looks so graceful," 
"Odin loves the water and he loves food," he said. "Not all big cats will dive and swim underwater even for meat treats."
Munro said tigers were the most powerful swimmers out of all land-dwelling animals.
Tragically, within our lifetimes, zoos might be the only places left to see these magnificent animals. 
A century ago there were about 100,000 tigers in the wild. Now there are just 2,500 adults, with the Bengal variety almost extinct. None has been seen in the wild since the last white tiger was shot and killed in 1958. 
White tigers are the most rare. They get their white color from an unusual and extremely rare genetic combination. 
I hope you enjoyed these photos as much as I did.
