Seriously, I am an astronomer. A shortened description of my job is that I make pretty pictures (galaxies, stars, nebulae, etc.). Here are a few that I have been working on recently. I hope you enjoy them.

The next four pictures are of a galaxy called IZw18. It's the 18th object that Zwicky (Zw) looked at and it was put into his first catalogue (I). Three pictures were taken and combined to make this one. Those pictures were taken with a blue, red, and green filter. The main body which is IZw18 is off to the left. I call it a peanut resting on a bed of cotton candy. The peanut is the brightly glowing dots and the cotton candy part are the streamers of gas and dust coming off the peanut shaped part. The crescent shaped blob to the right is IZw18's companion. They are both interacting with one another and could possibly merge in the next couple billion years.

This is just a picture of IZw18 alone. The blue filter is one of the pictures used in combination with two others. The blue filter allows you to see the stars in the picture (look to the right of big bright knot at the top). The "green" picture used is the light from Oxygen at a wavelength of 5007 Angstroms. 5007 Angstroms is rougly a greenish color. The red in this picture is from light produced by Hydrogen at the wavelength 6580 Angstroms. Somewhere in the red. As you can see, the stars are all but gone but this picture shows you where the gas and dust of the galaxy are located at.

This is actually just a close up of IZw18 from the first picture. As you can see, the stars are really bright in this picture.

This is just a close up of IZw18's companion from the first picture. Not as big or as bright as IZw18 but it makes this system of galaxies very interesting to look at.