I didn't have any time to send anyone any postcards from Chile, so I thought I'd do something different. I had some time on the CTIO Curtis Schmidt telescope to shoot fun stuff, and the enormous 1.3 x 1.3 degree field of view is great for making pretty pictures. I managed to squeeze in. Make web pages like these, I guess. I apologize for the size of the images, but I couldn't compress them any more without creating noticeable degradation.
Globular clusters are collections of hundreds of thousands of old stars.
I couldn't get Omega Centauri, but this one's probably next best. Notice that the cluster is not perfectly spherical, exhibiting some elongation along the NE-SW axis. North is to the right, and East is up. This galaxy still makes a really cool picture, though, dust lane in the center and all. If you look very carefully, you can see faint light extending toward the upper left and lower right, beyond the main elliptical.