What is it?

(click photo to enlarge)

You will never guess (and I mean that—my guess was that it was a detail of some ancient tapestry) so I will tell you: It is a photograph of the surface of Mars, taken by a satellite 178 miles above the surface. The photo covers an area about half a kilometer (.3 miles) across. It has not been altered. Read more at the Top Ten Astronomy Photos of 2009.

Man and Art

Lost somewhere in the enormous plains of time, there wanders a dwarf who is in the image of God. who has produced on a yet more dwarfish scale an image of creation. The pigmy picture of God we call man; the pigmy picture of creation we call art. — G. K. Chesterton, Lunacy and Letters