Recently, I’ve been trying to write about disparities in access to health care and about how people in developing countries can die from diseases we have the cure for. These issues are so complex, though, that the words don’t often spill easily onto the page. So I’m turning to photos of space which usually speak for themselves.

The first is a photo taken with the Hubble Space Telescope on its 20th anniversary. This is the Eagle Nebula seen here in incredible detail–particularly considering that it’s 6,500 light years away.

This second is a photo of the sun from the Solar Dynamics Observatory which was launched only a few months ago. It looks a lot less boring than that glob of yellow in the sky that makes me wear women’s sunglasses. You can see a video of the sun here too.

And for those of you either too young or to sheltered as a kid to know what I was referring to in the title of this post: