Today I found a few nice images that I wanted to talk about, and each one revealed something different about the object that was being imaged.  I thought it would be a good chance to show everyone how astronomy is really the study of patterns of light, speaking from a minimalist perspective.  We learn literally everything about the Universe beyond the solar system from the photons we see.  From photons we can deduce the mass, distance, density, composition, behaviour, formation, and evolution of the cosmos.  Pretty stellar! (pun intended)  Here are some recent images and what we learn from them....