In case you thought your problems were of any significance whatsoever, a new NASA video of the Lagoon Nebula is here to remind you that they absolutely are not.
Oh, did you have a bad day at work? The Lagoon Nebula doesn’t care. Maybe you won a big prize and impressed everyone? Well, this nebula could not give less of a damn. Neither could the Hubble Space Telescope, which has spent 28 years sending us puny humans absolutely gorgeous celestial images like this one, which features a stellar nursery nearly 4,000 light years away.
Just look at that close-up of a star, right around 29 seconds in. That’s no ordinary star—NASA says we’re looking at “a monster young star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun,” which is “blasting powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds, carving out a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust.”
Can you even imagine what it’s like to be 200,000 times brighter, and 32 times bigger, than the actual most powerful object in our solar system, around which all of life revolves?
And do you know what that monster star’s name is? Hershel 36. That’s right, a million-year-old star named after your great-uncle is transforming its little corner of the universe into a riotous landscape beyond Lisa Frank’s wildest imagination. And you can’t even bring yourself to pay your parking tickets.
Here’s a close-up of Hershel 36. Take a good look at this guy:
Want to be more like Hershel 36? Try throwing off your natal cocoon of material this weekend, for a change. It’s the absolute least you can do.