NGC 5457

(I have copied this post from the Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments blog because more people read this one.)

The image shows NGC 5457.

Poul Anderson tells us how the universe looks and sounds.

Janne Floris of the Time Patrol has on her wall not only:

"...a copy of a Cuyp landscape..."

but also:

"...an astronomical photograph of the Veil Nebula."
-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT p. 482.

In a picture on the wall in the Ganymedean colony:

"NGC 5457 coiled stark and glittering in space."
-Poul Anderson, Three Worlds To Conquer (London, 1966), Chapter 12, p. 87.

The universe is the constant background of all fiction and Poul Anderson regularly reminds us of it.