APOD4.6

This is looking out the window of the international space station. The structure resembling an eye is the Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft, which carries supplies and three fresh astronauts, of American, Russian, and Iranian descent. Anousheh Ansari is traveling with the shuttle as a paying customer. Little do the astronauts know, the machines plot against them.

APOD4.5

This is planet HD 209458b and it is evaporating because it's too close to that big fiery thing in the background. The planet is a hot Jupiter type system because it's like Jupiter but orbiting close to the sun like Mercury. It is claimed (by spectroscopic evidence) that the planet has water vapor, which would be the first planet recorded to have water outside of Earth. This is an artist's rendition however, because the planet is too small to be imaged.

APOD4.4

This is Saturn from below, taken by the Cassini spacecraft. The white dots are clouds high above the surface. The clouds are so thick that they are all we can see. The rings are visible in the bottom left. The circular structure in the center is a gigantic hurricane that shows so signs of stopping.

Galaxy Stuff

APODs: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_search?galaxy

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy

Galaxy Types:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptical_galaxy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_galaxy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregular_galaxy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starburst_galaxy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_galaxy

Collisions:
http://www.npaci.edu/enVision/v15.2/ricker.html

Growing Black Holes Regulate Galaxy Formation:
http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases05/050209_blackhole.html