15 Beautiful & Mystical Space Photos
These eerie, dark, pillar-like structures - part of the Eagle Nebula - are columns of cool, interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that serve as incubators for new stars - Hubble Space Telescope 1995.
On its 100,000th orbit of planet Earth, the Hubble Space Telescope peered into a small portion of the Tarantula Nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074, unveiling its stellar nursery. The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, triggered perhaps by a nearby supernova.
The massive star a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright blue one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution.
Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is likely similar to our own spiral galaxy, but viewed edge-on from far away. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, NGC 4565 is a stop on many telescopic tours of the northern sky as it lies in the faint but well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. This image reveals the galaxy's bulging central core dominated by light from a population of older, yellowish stars.
This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago.
To create this enhanced-color view, ultraviolet, green and infrared images were combined into a single black and white picture that isolates and maps regional color differences on Saturn's icy moon Dione.
This highly oblique image of northwestern African captures the curvature of the Earth and shows its atmosphere.
At the center of spiral galaxy M81 is a supermassive black hole about 70 million times more massive than our Sun.
This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix nebula, a cosmic starlet notable for its vivid colors and eerie resemblance to a giant eye.
WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, took this picture of one of the closest star forming regions, a part of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex.
This image released by NASA and made by the Spitzer Space Telescopeglowing stellar nursery. The infrared image was obtained by Spitzer's infrared array camera. The Spitzer Space Telescope was named after the late Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr., one of the 20th century's most influential scientists, who in the mid-1940 shows a s first proposed placing telescopes in space.
Comet McNaught is one of 54 comets discovered by Robert McNaught at Australia's Siding Spring Observatory while conducting a NASA funded search for potentially dangerous near Earth objects. This particular comet, discovered in September 2009, will not come close enough to Earth to present even a potential hazard.
"Martian forest" on Mars. Apparently, during a Martian winter, sand particles can get stuck together and frozen carbon dioxide will cover them making a sort of “forest” from these structures.
Clearly visible shadows cast by Saturn’s rings dense clouds of ammonia to the atmosphere. The diameter of Saturn’s rings almost 250 000 km, while the thickness of the rings is less than one kilometer.
Amazingly beautiful gas sphere photographed orbital telescope Hubble. This giant gas bubble is formed as a result of a supernova.
