I ♥ astronomy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/djulik/6264962767/

As one can see (I put notes on the flickr image, click on it) this 25-second exposure taken on October 20, 2011 contains a lot of things (the Earth’s zodiacal light, the “Kiwi”, the galactic center, the VLT observatory, a big heart in light painting, etc.) and it is a tribute to my wife who came to live in Chile with me so I could pursue my dream with astronomy. I stood behind my camera setup on a small tripod and fired the timer, then I drew a heart in the air using my ESO tiny key-chain Maglite®. It took me quite a few tried to get it like that especially not having a press-button flash light. Pressed against my fingers the heart was pink/red naturally and I just accentuated the pink.

This Picture was selected as ESO Picture of the week in february 2012 as a Valentine’s day image:
www.eso.org/public/images/potw1207a/
www.facebook.com/ESOAstronomy

Zoomable Picture (reprocessed by ESO):
www.eso.org/public/images/potw1207a/zoomable/

The story was put on Space.com:
www.space.com/14562-space-valentines-day-photo-galaxy-hea…

and then
the Santiago Times:
www.santiagotimes.cl/chile/education/23447-heart-shaped-l…

on WikiPedia’s page about Valentine’s day:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Heart_of_the_Milky_Way_-_Valen…

etc.

Then it was blogged everywhere, starting:

in Russian:
www.infuture.ru/article/5687

in Chinese:
roll.sohu.com/20120215/n334812427.shtml

on Yahoo News:
news.yahoo.com/cosmic-valentines-day-photo-wraps-milky-wa…

in Portuguese:
resenha-on.blogspot.com/2012/03/o-coracao-da-via-lactea-p…

etc. etc.

and on tumblr, rebloggued hundreds of times:
www.itsokaytobesmart.com/post/17614238791/put-a-little-sc…

moxielicious.tumblr.com/post/17634460764/put-a-little-sci…
etc. etc.