Gallery: Explore the Beauty of Space With the NASA Photo Archives
NASA01Earth and Space-p96
This iconic image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys on February 8, 2004, is often compared to the vivid, erratic whorls of color in a Van Gogh painting and reveals a never-before-seen halo of dust and light skyrocketing across trillions of miles. The dust and light surround a red supergiant known as V838 Monocerotis, located about 20,000 light years from Earth at the outer edge of the Milky Way. In 2002, the star’s brightness increased by several magnitudes over the course of several months, making it six hundred thousand times more luminous than the Sun. This pulse of light, also known as a light echo, most likely occurred some tens of thousands of years ago.
NASA02Earth and Space-p58
Although it’s formally known as IC 2118, this nebula is more commonly called the Witch Head Nebula, as its faint outline resembles a screaming crone. This infrared portrait, taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and released on Halloween in 2013, captures the Witch Head Nebula’s filmy demeanor, concealing the fact that the area is home to a massive star-making region. Situated in the Eridanus constellation, about 900 light years from Earth, this nebula is mainly lit by reflected starlight from the star Rigel, about 40 light years away from the nebula (and not pictured). Rigel, a blue supergiant (a hot, luminous star—larger than our Sun but smaller than a red supergiant), is the sixth brightest star in the sky and the brightest star in Orion.
NASA03Earth and Space-p25
This composite image of the Earth, captured by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, was compiled over twenty-two days and 312 orbits in 2012. The satellite’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) lets us note light at visible and infrared wavelengths. While the image highlights urban areas, it also captures fainter light signals—from gas flares to auroras to wildfires. The data captured by the NPP satellite was mapped over NASA’S “Blue Marble” imagery to offer an accurate depiction of the planet.
NASA04Earth and Space-p118
The Small Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy that flanks the Milky Way about 210,000 light years away from us, but it’s so bright that it can easily be seen from Earth in regions along and below the equator. During the time of New World exploration, the Small Magellanic Cloud was routinely used by seafarers for navigation. The Small Magellanic Cloud is considered a fragmentary galaxy, as it contains fundamental matter that is responsible for the formation of larger galaxies. Generally, such galaxies tend to be far away from us, so the proximity of the Small Magellanic Cloud gives us an unusual opportunity to observe the formation of larger galaxies and even of the universe. New Chandra X-ray Observatory data reveals low-mass stars, much like our Sun, emitting X-ray radiation. This 2013 composite image of the galaxy’s wing shows a region with stars containing fewer metals and less dust and gas than the Milky Way. The Chandra’s X-ray data is shown in purple, while visible data from the Hubble Space Telescope is shown in red, green, and blue. Infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope is also revealed in red.
NASA05Earth and Space-p37
This elegant montage of Jupiter and its moon Io was created from images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft in February and March 2007. The image of Jupiter is an infrared composite (blue reveals high clouds, while red shows clouds deeper in the planet’s atmosphere). The bluish-white oval in the image is the Great Red Spot—a high-pressure storm raging far above most of Jupiter’s clouds. The image of Io is a true-color composite that reveals an enormous eruption on Io’s right side in the volcano known as Tvashtar. The intense tidal forces on Io (the result of the gravitational pull of Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede) make it the most volcanically active entity in our solar system, with volcanic plumes reaching as high as 190 miles (300 kilometers) above the moon’s surface.
NASA06Earth and Space-p124
Our “sister galaxy,” Andromeda, is captured in stunning detail in this 2013 photograph taken by the Herschel Space Observatory. At 2.53 million light years away from us, the galaxy is the most distant object visible to the naked eye—but only from the darkest areas of the Earth, where there are clear skies and no light pollution. In this image, cold dust (matter that is only tens of degrees above absolute zero) is captured in infrared light, which appears in yellow and red. The hotter star-producing regions of the galaxy appear very dimly in blue. Although Andromeda has roughly a trillion stars compared to the Milky Way’s half a billion, our galaxy is far more massive because it contains more dark matter. In a few billion years, we can expect to undergo a cosmic fender-bender with Andromeda, which will lead to the formation of one massive galaxy.
NASA07Earth and Space-p42
On January 30, 2014, NASA’S Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) took this photograph of a partial solar eclipse, as the Moon transited between SDO and the Sun. Solar eclipses occur two to three times per year, and this was the lengthiest one on record, lasting for two-and-a-half hours. The Moon’s horizon appears clear; this is because it has no atmosphere to distort the Sun’s blazing light. It’s particularly valuable for SDO to witness the Moon’s passages during an eclipse. When scientists observe the degree of blackness of the lunar disc, they can measure and compensate for stray light that inhibits a telescope’s capacity to detect space dynamics more clearly. Ideally, the lunar disc should be observed as entirely black, but indirect light makes its way into the telescope.
NASA08Earth and Space-p18
This photograph was taken with a simple 35 mm point-and-shoot camera in 1989 by the STS-29 crew aboard the space shuttle Discovery. The sun beams down over the Earth, which is blanketed by an ethereal bank of mushroom-like clouds. The highest clouds in our atmosphere can be found up to thirty-one miles (fifty kilometers) above the Earth’s surface and tend to be a deep twilight blue color. These clouds form at extremely cold temperatures from a combination of dust and water vapor whose sources are not absolutely known. A 2012 NASA study revealed that global cloud height has lowered over the course of the past decade.
NASA09Earth and Space-p39
On October 10, 2013, the Cassini spacecraft took this image of Saturn, which gives us an intimate view of the planet's sunlit northern hemisphere. While Cassini images taken in 2004 offered bluish renderings of the northern hemisphere, the 2013 images show us the region with a more golden color, even as the northern pole remains bluish due to wintry weather patterns. Saturn's current orbit offers Cassini a detailed view of its poles, rings, and magnetic environment. The rings of the planet comprise billions of particles, from tiny dust motes to mountainous boulders. These rings are thought to be chunks of comets, asteroids, and shattered moons.
NASA10Earth and Space-p55
The Helix Nebula, which appears like a giant eye, lives in the constellation Aquarius, about 695 light years from Earth. It's known as a planetary nebula. This misnomer emerged from early astronomers who discovered planetary nebulae but mistook them for planets, since they were roughly the same color, size, and shape of Uranus and Neptune. The Helix Nebula was created from material expelled by a dying star. When a stars runs out of hydrogen fuel for fusion reaction, it uses helium instead. When the helium runs out, the star dies and leaves behind a white dwarf, a small but extremely dense and hot body of gas, visible here as a tiny white dot in the center of the picture. Outer shells of gas blown out as the star dies coalesce with other gas and dust clouds to create nebulae. In this image, captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2010, infrared light from the outer gaseous layers is captured in blues and greens. The red in the middle of the ÒeyeÓ shows the final layers of gas blown out when the star died. The brighter red circle in the center is a disc of dust around the white dwarf; itÕs likely that this disc was created by comets streaking around the star. When the star blew off its outer layers, its planets and comets careened into each other, creating a hailstorm of comets and planetary debris.
NASA11Earth and Space-p68
In May 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope took this image of ngc 6543, also known as the Cat’s Eye Nebula, which is 3,262 light years from Earth. This glowing space phantasm is a planetary nebula—the result of Sun-like stars ejecting their outer gas layers. There are many theories on what creates this distinctive visual pattern; some scientists believe it’s the effect of the central star’s magnetic activity, while others believe that the rings were later by‑products created by wave formations in the gas. Whatever the case, scientists have observed that the nebula is rapidly expanding.
NASA12Earth and Space-p84
This composite image from the Hubble Space Telescope features a quartet of nebulae that are each about 7,000 light years from Earth. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (which is no longer in use) took these images in February 2007, revealing a cornucopia of different shapes, features, and chemical processes—offering us a great deal of information about the materials and processes inherent in star death. At the top left is the nebula known as HE 2-47 (in the Carina constellation), also known as the Starfish Nebula. The “legs” of the starfish indicate that the nebula emitted gaseous material at least three times in opposing directions. At the top right is IC 4593 (in the Hercules constellation), which features streams of gas jetting in opposite directions, from the top and bottom. At the tail ends of these jets are balls of glowing red nitrogen gas. NGC 5307 is at the bottom left (in the Centaurus constellation), which features an asymmetrical spiral pattern that probably stems from a wobbly dying star. Finally, NGC 5315 is the nebula at the bottom right (in the constellation Circinus), whose X-shaped pattern may indicate material ejected by a dying star in two different directions.
