Another passion of mine is riding my bicycle. Rff

Now that the college football season is over I will go back to one of my favorites, the Eagle Nebula...Better know to some as the Pillars of Creation.  One of the 1st images from the Hubble Telescope after its cataract surgery in 1993.

I am told that Stars are born here, that the left pillar is 4 light years from top to bottom...that is 5,878.5 billion miles x 4.  It is such a large number that I could not figure out how to do it with the zero's.  So 23,514 billion miles or 23.514 trillion miles?

This Nebula is 7,000 light years from earth.  There really is no historical time frame to compare when the light we now see from this nebula started its journey to us.   The Pyramid of Khufu in Giza was built around 2560 BC.  So the light started 2400 years before the Great Pyramid was built. Our galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years across, and we can only see about 6,000 light years into the disk in the visible spectrum.  Estimates project that there are between 100 and 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. They also think that each star has at least one planet, which means there are likely to be hundreds of billions of planets in the Milky Way – billions of which are believed to be the size and mass of the Earth.  And on top of that, they think the KNOWN Universe hold 10,000 galaxies...

Like all of the Universe, I cant comprehend any of that, so it seems very appropriate for me...

Yes, post those phots, please.  I want to see that beautiful face. 

Single-minded dogs fascinate me.  There needs to be a new word to describe them because they are beyond single-minded.  My dogs couldn't be any more gentle, but if they decided to bite you, you'd have to kill them to stop them because they never quit.  It sounds as though Laika was the same.

She sure was.  I've got scars to prove it.  Every time I got bit it was my fault.  I should've been better at taking her reward away.  She had worked her backside off to get it and didn't like to give it up.  It was a rodeo every time getting it back.

I think you folks who work with hunting dogs and police/military dogs would be super puppy raisers, especially for future guide dogs.  In a good service dog organization, the puppies go from their raiser to a professional trainer for a year or so and I know the pros do a fabulous job of working on commands and focus. But my worse flaw as a puppy raiser was working on focus -- which is what their service life is going to be about. It's part of the reason a lot washout.

Or maybe I should just come and spend a training season with some of you!!!

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I found a good picture of her!  Here's Laika in all her glory!!  Now I need to decide if I want it as my avatar.  I like the windmill, though.  Decision, decisions.

Good looking dog!  She would make a great avatar.  You can always switch them around for variety.

Beautiful face!  She wasn't a youngster then, was she?

Football!!

Thank you for starting this thread, I had forgot to set my avatar!
Mine is spongebob because I couldn’t find a jpeg of Patrick cooking!

Beautiful face!  She wasn't a youngster then, was she?

No she wasn't.  She was retired due to arthritis.  She was supposedly around seven when she was retired, but I think she was quite a bit older.  Probably close to 10.  I was lucky enough to get to keep her.

Nerd. And mad scientists are the ultimate cool nerds. Doc Brown, Frankenstein, Doctor Horrible, Mr. Peabody, Rick, Phineas and Ferb, etc. In fact my Halloween costume last year was almost exactly what my avatar is wearing, a Howie style lab coat and welding goggles (but with the dark lenses remove).

I may be from North Carolina but I am a Colorado Buffalo!

Now that football season is over, I changed mine to reflect one of my other interest, also my summer home. 

I am completely computer illiterate, but I figured out how to add an avatar all by myself  -- it was a proud moment  

I choose the picture of a German Chocolate Cheesecake because that was the dessert I entered in the "anything but" category of a recent competition and received my first ever 180 pin.

Just added mine and don't like it.  How do you remove and replace?

Just go to your profile, click modify profile and change your avatar.