Alan Taylor explains the inspiration for the Hubble Space Telescope Advent calendar:
I’m not strictly what you would call a spiritual person, but I have had a couple of experiences in my life that I would call spiritual, which I believe helps me in my attempts to understand a variety of human experiences. In my view, the heart of much of that is a deep sense of awe, an experience where one feels that one is only glimpsing a tiny portion of something truly magnificent and powerful — and that somehow we are all connected to it. You could use the same description to fit Hubble images – the incomprehensible beauty, power, scale and mystery — and we are all connected to it, within sight of it, part of it all.
The Angry Birds version is good enough for me.
(Photo: "The view of the Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys is filled by stars, part of NGC 6791, an old open star cluster in the Lyra constellation. The bright stars are roughly 13,300 light years distant. Two background galaxies, far beyond our own Milky Way, can be seen at upper left." By NASA, ESA, and L. Bedin)
The Dish 