Merry Astronaut Christmas

How was your Christmas Eve? I'm sure it was great. Mine was great. There was family and Scrabble, a jigsaw puzzle, a crackling fireplace. It was perfect.

But it also would have been perfect to be floating outside the International Space Station, with the entirety of our beautiful, fragile planet behind me.

This photo captures astronaut Mike Hopkins during one of two Christmas Eve spacewalks outside the International Space Station. The original, hi-res image can be found on NASA's website, or on its Instagram account. The photo has received 47,600 "likes" on Instagram. NASA uses Instagram. NASA.

Hopkins, as the news media has been sharing throughout the week, was one of the astronauts tasked with repairing a degraded cooling pump on the exterior of the International Space Station. Astronaut Rick Mastracchio, also on the spacewalk, took this most epic of Christmas Eve portraits. He's the spacebloke reflected in Mike's helmet.

Here, have a look around the Milky Way.

This massive, interactive, zoomable, explorable, 360-degree map of the night sky is the greatest thing I have seen this week: http://media.skysurvey.org/interactive360/index.html

The image is the largest true-color photograph of the night sky ever created, comprised of 37,000 photographs from North America and South Africa. It was created by a 28-year-old first-time astrophotographer from the Seattle area, during treks covering over 60,000 miles. It's incredible.

It reminds me of the first time I saw the Milky Way, from a remote beach on the northern tip of New Zealand's South Island. Having spent most of my life in and around New York City, I had to be told by my fellow travelers that the enormous stretch of honestly, truly twinkling stars I was looking at was the Milky Way. I believe my mouth actually hung open. The universe is unbelievable.

I'm not sure if the image is copyrighted, so to play it safe I'm not going to publish it here. But do visit the link above, and do read the awesome backstory on Wired. And while you're at it, show some love for the photographer and visit his page: http://skysurvey.org.

We are so small. Out there is so big.