Bad Astronomy

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Today is a holiday you either love or hate, for various and obvious enough reasons. But either way I figure it’s another chance to have some fun with astronomy, so I put together a gallery of a dozen pictures of cosmic cardioids, heart-shaped astronomical objects from near and far. Some are mere meters across, others tens of thousands of light years wide, but all of them are a beautiful and fascinating tribute to that fist-sized organ beating away in your chest.

I also wrote up descriptions of them, because, after all, if we have a holiday to celebrate one organ, why not include another as well? Given it’s from where emotions really flow, who doesn’t love a big, sexy brain?

[P.S. When you’re done, here’s my friend and songstress Kim Boekbinder’s take on the cardiac muscle, called “I Have Your Heart”. You’ll like it.]