Amazing Space Photos

NASA handout image dated February 2011 shows a swirling landscape of stars known as the North America Nebula. In visible light, the region resembles North America, but in this image infrared view from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the continent disappears. The reason you don't see it in Spitzer's view has to do, in part, with the fact that infrared light can penetrate dust whereas visible light cannot. Dusty, dark clouds in the visible image ...

This infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) showcases the Tadpole Nebula, a star-forming hub in the Auriga constellation about 12,000 light-years from Earth. As WISE scanned the sky, capturing this mosaic of stitched-together frames, it caught an asteroid in our solar system passing by. The asteroid, called 1719 Jens, left tracks across the image. A second asteroid was also observed cruising by. ...

This image provided by NASA Thursday Dec. 9, 2010 shows this oddly colorful nebula which is the supernova remnant IC 443 as seen by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Also known as the Jellyfish nebula, IC 443 is particularly interesting because it provides a look into how stellar explosions interact with their environment. IC 443 can be found near the star Eta Geminorum, which lies near Castor, one of the twins in the ...

This handout composite image by NASA/ESA from the Hubble telescope, taken between February 1-2, 2010 and obtained on April 23, 2010 shows an image of a pillar of star birth, three light-years high, depicting how scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged particles) from super-hot newborn stars in the nebula are shaping and compressing the pillar, causing new stars to form within it. This pinnacle lies within a stellar nursery called ...

This NASA handout image received 28 August 2007 shows a newly expanded image of the Helix nebula on the the fourth anniversary of the launch of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. This spectacular object, a dying star unraveling into space, is a favorite of amateur and professional astronomers alike. Spitzer has mapped the expansive outer structure of the six-light-year-wide nebula, and probed the inner region around the central dead star to reveal ...

This NASA handout image obtained February 1, 2010 shows the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog, perhaps the original spiral nebula--a large galaxy with a well defined spiral structure also cataloged as NGC 5194. Over 60,000 light-years across, M51's spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy, NGC 5195. Image data from the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys was reprocessed to produce this alternative ..

This glowing emerald nebula seen by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is named RCW 120; it is about 4,300 light-years away in the tail of the constellation Scorpius. The false-color image was created by assigning brilliant colors to wavelengths that are usually invisible to the human eye. (Photo courtesy Caltech/JPL)

A photo provided by NASA shows a Spitzer Space Telescope view of the North American nebula in the visiible light spectrum. The shape of North America is a result of clouds of dust obscuring light.

The tiny, three-mile-wide (four-kilometer-wide) moon Pallene hangs in front of mighty Saturn in a raw picture from NASA's Cassini orbiter taken October 16. The picture is among dozens Cassini collected during a "weekend road trip" around Saturn's moons. In total, the craft swung past nine moons in 62 hours, snapping high-resolution images along the way.

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix nebula, a cosmic starlet often photographed by amateur astronomers for its vivid colors and eerie resemblance to a giant eye.