Out Of This World Images

Catalog of New (at bottom) and Old Images

The Cartwheel Galaxy

Those specks of glitter dotting the photo’s dark background represent distant galaxies and bright stars. “The large spiral galaxy at the base of this image is accompanied by a profusion of smaller, more distant galaxies which range from fully-fledged spirals to mere bright smudges,” NASA explains.

This area of space is named LEDA 2046648, and it’s far away in the Hercules constellation, which is just over a billion light-years away from us here on Earth.

The Moon by WD Thomas

The Sun

As one of the larger galaxies located in the Virgo Cluster, this galaxy is roughly 52.5 million light years from Earth and contains some spectacular supernovae. It also has an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN), meaning it has a Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) at its center, and shows evidence of considerable star formation.

Surface of Mercury

This mosaic of Caloris basin, Mercury, is an enhanced-color composite overlain on a monochrome mosaic. The color mosaic is made up of images obtained when both the spacecraft and the Sun were overhead, conditions best for discerning variations in brightness. The monochrome mosaic is made up of images obtained at off-vertical Sun angles (i.e., high incidence angles) and with visible shadows so as to reveal clearly the topographic form of geologic features. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

The three galaxies that look like they're cuddling off to the right will eventually merge with one another. An unrelated galaxy is seen off to the left, with lots of other galaxies appearing as small smudges.

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft caught a massive volcanic eruption — the blue protuberance on the top left — on Jupiter’s moon Io. This small moon is one of just a handful of volcanically active worlds in our Solar System.

Distinctive in Mars Orbiter Camera images and THEMIS global inventory, this small, 366-meter diameter crater still shows darker material left over from the original impact extending quite far.

This image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows IC 5332, a spiral galaxy, in unprecedented detail.IC 5332 lies over 29 million light-years from Earth, and has a diameter of roughly 66 000 light-years, making it about a third smaller than the Milky Way. It is notable for being almost perfectly face-on with respect to Earth, allowing us to admire the symmetrical sweep of its spiral arms.

This image of a "jet" in Jupiter's atmosphere was taken by the JunoCam public engagement camera aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft. This image of Jet N3 shows features as small as 2.6 kilometers across.

Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Sergio Díaz

NGC 6530 is an open cluster within the Lagoon Nebula, rendered by Hubble's keen gaze and distinctive colour palette into a billowing mass of layered clouds pierced by the white-hot pinpricks of stars. A lot of what you can see is ionised hydrogen, laced with dust, and the nebula as a whole is known for forming this into new stars.

This is Mars in winter, as seen from orbit with an ultra-high-resolution camera. These snowy sand dunes are topped with a mix of dry and water ice, but it's the frozen carbon dioxide that's most likely to linger, as water ice turns to vapour in the thin Martian atmosphere. And as carbon dioxide forms four bonds when it makes crystals instead of six like water, the dry snowflakes on Mars are cube-shaped, instead of the six-sided ones we're used to on Earth.

Galaxy NGC 1097, in the southern constellation of Fornax, the Furnace, doesn't have a common nickname like some other galaxies, but this rather beautiful barred spiral takes on a different character when you zoom in on its centre, as the ERIS (Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph) infrared camera at the VLT (Very Large Telescope) in Chile did to take its inaugural image.

The Spaghetti Nebula, by Michael P. Caligiuri, Anza Borrego Desert, California, 25-26 November 2022 Equipment: ZWO ASI 294 camera, Samyang 135mm f/1.8 lens at f/4, Astro-Physics AP1100 equatorial mount.

The Bubble Nebula, by Carl Gough, Littlehampton, West Sussex, October-November 2022 with some data from 2021 Equipment: ZWO ASI 1600MM camera, Orion 8” f/8 Ritchey-Chretien astrograph, EQ6 mount

The Dumbbell Nebula, by Francis Bozon, remotely via Alentejo Remote Observatory, Portugal, 4 August - 28 September 2022 Equipment: Moravian G3-16200 camera, Astrosib RC 400 Ritchey-Chretien telescope, ASA DDM85 direct-drive mount

Pluto, as seen by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its historic flyby of the dwarf planet in July 2015. (Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

This cluster of galaxies, called SDSS J1226+2149, holds so much star and planetary weight that it's literally warping space, like a bowling ball sitting on a mattress. The warped cosmic area distorts and magnifies the objects in the distance. This effect, referred to by astronomers as gravitational lensing, occurs when a massive celestial object such as a galaxy cluster causes a sufficient curvature of spacetime for light to be visibly bent around it, as if by a gargantuan lens.

Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is a supernova remnant located about 11,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. It spans approximately 10 light-years. This new image uses data from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to reveal Cas A in a new light.

Jupiter Storm

An image taken on Oct. 24, 2017, shows a large storm brewing in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere. According to NASA, the storm is rotating counter-clockwise with a wide range of cloud altitudes. The darker clouds are expected to be deep in the atmosphere, whereas the brighter clouds are at higher altitudes. Additionally, the bright clouds are thought to be updrafts of ammonia ice crystals, possibly mixed with water ice.

Mars from Hope

This image of Mars was taken by UAE's Hope Mars Mission and processed by community scientist Jason Major. The data was originally collected on 14 July 2022. Note the vast expanse of Valles Marineris and the gorgeous southern polar cap.

Moon

Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy has captured a “GigaMoon” — a 1.3-gigapixel highly-detailed image of the Moon made from 280,000 photos.

Rover’s Rambling, Mount Sharp, Mars

This wiggly yellow line shows us where the Mars Curiosity rover has traversed the Red Planet over the past few months.

Professional landscape and astrophotographer Aaron Jenkin captured a stunning time-lapse image of the milky way galaxy in Aoraki Mount Cook National Park in New Zealand — which is regarded as one of the darkest places on earth for night photography.

Mars’s Jezero crater contains channels and other water-sculpted features like deltas.

Webb Image - Red dual opposing jets coming from young stars fill the darker top half of the image, while a glowing pale-yellow, cave-like structure is bottom center, tilted toward two o’clock, with a bright star at its center.

NGC 6888, dubbed the "Crescent Nebula" due to its distinctive shape, is an astronomical masterpiece located in the constellation Cygnus. Forged by cosmic forces billions of years ago, it is a stunning testament to the relentless beauty and chaotic nature of the universe. At its core, the Crescent Nebula is the result of a cataclysmic interstellar event. A massive, hot Wolf-Rayet star, known as WR 136, sits at the heart of this cosmic spectacle. Its fierce stellar winds collide with surrounding materials, sculpting breathtaking tendrils of glowing gas and dust, stretching across vast expanses of space.