As well as being a photographer, I am also an astronomy enthusiast. I studied Astrophysics in university as a 3rd year Physics course, not a small task when I was a full-time Mathematics student. I don't own a telescope, but I've spent more than enough time reading about it and wondering if I could stay up past midnight watching the stars, and still be up at dawn for landscape photographs.
Today I came across a beautiful hi-res photograph of Mercury, a fantastic composite of over 30 photographs from the MESSENGER spacecraft in 2008. Full marks to Gordon Ugarkovic who created this photograph. Here is his Flickr stream, and here is the link to his Mercury photograph at 500x500, from which you can take a look at the hi-res version (5000x5000).
. . . Rob Williams http://www.robertwilliamsphotography.ca
Personal observations about landscape and nature photography