Happy Valentine's Day!

I typically do not pay attention to Valentines Day since only once in my life have I actually been dating someone when the day arrives. Even then, our relationship was on the fritz so it really wasn’t a romantic day after all.

Anyway, I saw this on the Astronomy Picture of the Day site and thought it was pretty cool; see, I do have a romantic streak; I just don’t have anyone to show it to. Yeah, I know, poor me.

I’ll just reproduce what they wrote below.

Long Stem Rosette

Explanation: The Rosette Nebula (aka NGC 2237) is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers. But it is the one most often suggested as a suitable astronomy image for Valentine's Day. Of the many excellent Rosette Nebula pictures submitted to APOD editors, this view seemed most appropriate, with a long stem of glowing hydrogen gas in the region included in the composition. At the edge of a large molecular cloud in Monoceros, some 5,000 light years away, the petals of this rose are actually a stellar nursery whose lovely, symmetric shape is sculpted by the winds and radiation from its central cluster of hot young stars. The stars in the energetic cluster, cataloged as NGC 2244, are only a few million years old, while the central cavity in the Rosette Nebula is about 50 light-years in diameter. Happy Valentine's Day!