Hartley 2

Looking up has its rewards, as NASA dramatically demonstrated this week.

The space agency released splendid photographs of the comet Hartley 2 taken by NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft. These images offer a rare look at this type of celestial object. The investigation is intellectually significant, partly because some scientists speculate that information about a comet's composition provide clues into the creation of the solar system.

I wouldn't know; I'm not an astronomer. I do like looking into the night sky and opening myself to wonder. The NASA photographs bring the sky to earthlings, encourage us to reason about the universe, help us appreciate what we have, and what unknowns we might still understand.