Astronomical Phenomena

Images depicting cosmic events and celestial bodies, including asteroids and nebulae, with vibrant colors showcasing the universe's mystery and beauty.

Early on April 21, 2002, a large (X-1) flare and a partial halo coronal mass ejection (CME) exploded out from the Sun from near its west (right) limb. A pronounced proton storm of high-energy particles took place at about the same time as seen in the LASCO (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph) C3 image taken in visible light from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). The accompanying coronal mass ejection can also be seen in the image.

This image of asteroid 2011 MD was taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in Feb. 2014, over a period of 20 hours.

Small part of an infinite star field of space in the Universe. "Elements of this image furnished by NASA".

The Blue Ring Nebula is thought to be the product of two stars merging into one. The collision of the bodies ejected a cloud of hot debris into space. A disk of gas orbiting the larger star cut the cloud in half, creating two cones that are moving away from the star in opposite directions. The base of one cone is moving almost directly toward Earth, while the other is moving almost directly away. Magenta represents optical light from the shockwave at the front of the expanding debris cones, outlining the two cone bases at their widest points. Blue represents far-ultraviolet light (not visible to the human eye) and comes from gas behind the shockwave. As the gas expands and cools, it forms hydrogen molecules that interact with the interstellar medium and emit only far-ultraviolet light. These emissions are visible only where the cones overlap (as seen from Earth), forming the blue ring around the central star. Movie available at

Transmission electron micrograph of a SARS-CoV-2 virus particle (UK B.1.1.7 variant), isolated from a patient sample and cultivated in cell culture. Image captured at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Jovian Lightning

Galaxy, universe and an orange star in space on a dark background at night for astronomy. Sky, flare and a planet or nebula in the cosmos as part of a constellation on an interstellar backdrop

Eyeball in space atmosphere illustration background

NASA's NuSTAR will be able to identify individual black holes making up the diffuse X-ray glow, also called the X-ray background. At bottom right is a simulated view of what NuSTAR will see.

Early on April 21, 2002, a large (X-1) flare and a partial halo coronal mass ejection (CME) exploded out from the Sun from near its west (right) limb. A pronounced proton storm of high-energy particles took place at about the same time as seen in the LASCO (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph) C3 image taken in visible light from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). The accompanying coronal mass ejection can also be seen in the image.

Blazar 3C 279's historic gamma-ray flare can be seen in this image from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on NASA's Fermi satellite. Gamma rays with energies from 100 million to 100 billion electron volts (eV) are shown; for comparison, visible light has energies between 2 and 3 eV. The image spans 150 degrees, is shown in a stereographic projection, and represents an exposure from June 11 at 00 28 UT to June 17 at 08 17 UT. Read more a href= http //go.nasa.gov/1TqBAdJ rel= nofollow go.nasa.gov/1TqBAdJ /a

Oblique Origins

enhanced image from the far-ultraviolet detector on NASAs Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a ghostly shell of ionized gas around Z Camelopardalis, a binary, or double-star system featuring a collapsed, dead star known as a white dwarf, and a companion star. Z Cam is the bright object near the centre of the image. Parts of the shell are seen as a lobe-like, light-blue feature below and to the right of Z Cam, and as two large, light blue, perpendicular lines on the left. The massive shell around Z Cam provides evidence of material ejected during and swept up by a powerful nova eruption, called a classical nova, which likely occurred a few thousand years ago.

Hinode (Sunrise), formerly known as Solar-B before reaching orbit, was launched from the Uchinoura Space Center in Japan on September 23, 2006. Hinode was designed to probe into the Suns magnetic field to better understand the origin of solar disturbances which interfere with satellite communications, electrical power transmission grids, and the safety of astronauts traveling beyond the Earths magnetic field. Hinode is circling Earth in a polar orbit that places the instruments in continuous sunlight for nine months each year and allows data dumps to a high latitude European Space Agency (ESA) ground station every orbit. NASA and other science teams will support instrument operations and data collection from the spacecrafts operation center at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agencys (JAXAs) Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science facility located in Tokyo. The Hinode spacecraft is a collaboration among space agencies of Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Euro

Two Galileo Views of Thebe

Clostridium botulinum. Colonies of Clostridium botulinum cultured in Petri dish. Clostridium botulinum, a Gram negative bacteria that produces the nerve toxin which causes the rare but serious paralytic illness botulism.

In this image from NASA's Voyager wide-angle image taken on Aug. 23 1989, the two main rings of Neptune can be clearly seen. In the lower part of the frame the originally announced ring arc, consisting of three distinct features, is visible.

Spectacular Christmas lights in the trees of Johnson City, Texas Spectacular Christmas lights in the trees of Johnson City, Texas

This image of a dying star, protoplanetary nebula IRAS22036+5306, containing strange, complex structures may help explain the death throes of stars and defy our current understanding of physics. Taken by NASA's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.

Illumination

A quartet of false-color, composite images show the dance of Saturn's southern lights in data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Pluto, NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken from 2002 to 2003

This MOC image shows a cone-shaped hill, perhaps a remnant of a material that was once more laterally extensive across the area, on a textured plain in the Hyperboreus Labyrinthus region in the north polar region of Mars

Red-Hot Saturn

False colors emphasize the variations in surface brightness on asteroid Annefrank, as seen in an image taken by NASA's Stardust spacecraft during a Nov. 2, 2002 flyby of the asteroid.

. MAVEN Ultraviolet Image of Comet Siding Springs Hydrogen Coma

Inner Radiation Belts of Jupiter

This montage of images, made from data obtained by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, shows the location on Saturn where the NASA spacecraft entered Saturn's atmosphere on Sept. 15, 2017. This view shows Saturn in the thermal infrared, at a wavelength of 5 microns. Here, the instrument is sensing heat coming from Saturn's interior, in red. Clouds in the atmosphere are silhouetted against that inner glow. This location -- the site of Cassini's atmospheric entry -- was at this time on the night side of the planet, but would rotate into daylight by the time Cassini made its final dive into Saturn's upper atmosphere, ending its remarkable 13-year exploration of Saturn. Both an annotated version and an animation are available at

Uranus Cyclone With Color Added. NASA scientists have made the first observation of a polar cyclone on Uranus. Using radio antenna dishes of the Very Large Array in New Mexico, they were able to peer below the methane clouds and determine there is circulating air at the planet's north pole that is warm and dry. These images were generated using the microwave observations - from left, in wavelength bands K, Ka, and Q. The average brightness was removed to enhance the contrast, and three different color maps were used to highlight various features. The cyclone is visible at the north pole, seen as a light-colored dot right of center in each image of Uranus. The observations used to generate these images were made in October 2021. https //photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25951

This panel of images shows the nearly spherical shape of Saturn's moon Phoebe, as derived from imaging obtained from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Each image represents a 90-degree turn.

. Tracking Waves from Sunspots Gives New Solar Insight

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer took this near ultraviolet image of Messier 101 on June 20, 2003. Messier 101 is a large spiral galaxy located 20 million light-years from Earth.

Jupiter's Moon Io Seen in Infrared Light. NASA's Juno mission captured this infrared view of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io on July 5, 2022, when the spacecraft was about 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) away. This infrared image was derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard Juno. In this image, the brighter the color the higher the temperature recorded by JIRAM. https //photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25698

This engineering image derives from 100 seconds of observing time on one of the three science instruments aboard the Space InfraRed Telescope Facility (SIRTF) (now known as the Spitzer Space Telescope).

NGC 2392

An expanded view of comet C/2006 W3 (Christensen) is shown here. NASA's WISE spacecraft observed this comet on April 20th, 2010 as it traveled through the constellation Sagittarius.

Unique multicolored iridescent film of oil spill isolated on black background

Photograph of unique abstract iridescent opalescent oil film isolated on black background

A Colored Kuiper

A series of three (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph) LASCO C2 images shows a large coronal mass ejection, showing the structures of the expanding cloud unusually strong and clearly defined. The white circle represents the size of the Sun.

This NASA Voyager 1 image was taken of Jupiter's darkside on March 5, 1979 when the spacecraft was in Jupiter's shadow, about 6 hours after closest approach to the planet at a distance of 320,000 miles.

These are the discovery observations of asteroid 2018 LA from the Catalina Sky Survey, taken June 2, 2018. About eight hours after these images were taken, the asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere (about 9 44 a.m. PDT, 12 44 p.m. EDT, 16 44 UTC, 6 44 p.m. local Botswana time), and disintegrated in the upper atmosphere near Botswana, Africa.

This annotated image highlights the location of the new heat source in the southern hemisphere of the Jupiter moon Io. The image was generated from data collected on Dec. 16, 2017, by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard NASA's Juno mission when the spacecraft was about 290,000 miles (470,000 kilometers) from the Jovian moon. In this infrared image, the brighter the color the higher the temperature recorded by JIRAM. An animation is available at

These images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of C/2012 S1 (Comet ISON) were taken on June 13, when ISON was 310 million miles (about 500 million kilometers) from the sun.

Opportunity's Hole in One

Asteroid 2010 TK7, the first known Earth Trojan asteroid, is circled in green, in this single frame taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The majority of the other dots are stars or galaxies far beyond our solar system.

Four Views of the F Ring

Propellers of Saturn's Rings

AS08-12-2148 (21-27 Dec. 1968) --- View of the lunar surface as photographed from the Apollo 8 spacecraft. Zero-phase bright spot. With near-vertical sun illumination, topographical detail is washed out and differences in surface brightness are accentuated. The numerous small bright-halo craters become conspicuous. A few larger craters have extremely bright inner walls that are commonly streaked by darker material. The bright glow near the conspicuous bright-walled crater is a halo that surrounds the position of the spacecraft shadow.

Io Degassing from sub- and anti-Jupiter Regions

NASA image release September 29, 2011 This image of the distant active galaxy Markarian 509 was taken in April 2007 with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 2. To read more go to a href= http //www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/turbulent-black-hole.html rel= nofollow www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/turbulent-black... /a

Kepler Crater Ejecta

These pictures of Neptune were obtained by NASA's Voyager 2 on Apr. 26,1989. The picture on the right was taken five hours after that at left, during which time the planet rotated 100 degrees.

Thermal imaging of Honey bee (Apis mellifera) brood comb. Cooler parts appear darker, warmer parts appear bright in colour. Very bright spots showing worker bees heating brood cells with the help of their flight muscles, Germany. April. (small repro only)

Spray Above Enceladus III

NASA image acquired November 11-12, 2012. On November 12, 2012, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured the top nighttime image of city, village, and highway lights near Delhi, India. For comparison, the lower image shows the same area one night earlier, as observed by the Operational Line Scan (OLS) system on a Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) spacecraft. Since the 1960s, the U.S. Air Force has operated DMSP in order to observe clouds and other weather variables in key wavelengths of infrared and visible light. Since 1972, the DMSP satellites have included the Operational Linescan System (OLS), which gives weather forecasters some ability to see in the dark. It has been a highly successful sensor, but it is dependent on older technology with lower resolution than most scientists would like. And for many years, DMSP data were classified. Through improved optics and smart” sensing technology, the VIIRS day-night band,” i

Jupiter's Northern Auroral Oval

Auroras of Saturn

The Ups and Downs of Eros

Seminoma-type testicular cancer visualized by ultrasound.

This simulation, which begins and ends with a real image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, demonstrates how the appearance of discrete jets could be an optical illusion that varies based on viewing geometry.

The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) Taken by the Infrared Astronomical Stellite (IRAS): Joint Project with USA, UK, and Netherlands

This frame from an animation, derived from data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows how plasma swirling around Saturn is correlated to bursts of radio waves emanating from the planet.

This three-dimensional illustration shows how the rotating space around a black hole twists up the magnetic field in the plasma falling toward the black hole. The black sphere at the center of the figure is the black hole itself.

Kidney scintigraphy. Kidneys gamma scan showing a normal vesico-ureteric reflux.

This all-sky image shows the spatial distribution over the whole sky of the galactic haze at 30 and 44 GHz, extracted from the Planck observations.

This graphic shows results of the first analysis of Martian soil by the CheMin experiment on NASA's Curiosity rover. The image reveals the presence of crystalline feldspar, pyroxenes and olivine mixed with some amorphous (non-crystalline) material.

This is a NASA Hubble Space Telescope series of 24 images showing the full 5.34-hour rotation of the 325-mile diameter (525 kilometer) asteroid Vesta.

Thermal image of drilling into a component, with heating of the drill tip and component

Coloured side view X-ray of a silicone implant inside a woman's breast.

Coronal structures of the Sun seen during a lull in solar activity, by Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)'s LASCO C2 coronagraph. (The Sun is represented by the white circle in the center of the red occulting disk.)

ESA's Herschel Space Observatory first spotted the colliding duo in images taken with longer-wavelength infrared light (left) with a close-up view at right, with merging galaxies circled.

Subtle Ripples in Jupiter's Ring

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope peered deep into Uranus' atmosphere to see clear and hazy layers created by a mixture of gases. Using infrared filters, Hubble captured detailed features of three layers of Uranus' atmosphere.

Vicia Dicot leaf under a microscope (Vicia Dicot leaf W.M.), 40x

Hantavirus, computer artwork.

Jupiter's White Ovals

This animation illustrates the modeled trajectories of particles that were ejected from Bennu's surface on Jan. 19, 2019. After ejecting from the asteroid's surface, the particles either briefly orbited Bennu and fell back to its surface or escaped from Bennu and into space. Animation available at

Coronary angiogram stenosed artery.

This topographic radar image acquired by NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) in Feb. 2000 shows the Lanai (left) and western Maui (right) islands of Hawaii.

Colorized electron micrograph of the herpes simplex virus (HSV).

$Wrist fracture. X-ray showing a fracture of the radius bone in the forearm near the wrist.$

Chiliques volcano in Chile shows a hot spot in the summit crater and several others along the upper flanks of the edifice, indicating volcanic activity. NASA's Terra satellite acquired this image on May 24, 2000.

This collage of radar images of near-Earth asteroid 1999 JD6 was collected by NASA scientists on July 25, 2015. The asteroid is between 660-980 feet (200-300 meters) in diameter.

Imaging Plans for MESSENGER's Second Mercury Flyby

The color scale in this image from the Planck mission represents the emission from dust, a minor but crucial component that pervades our Milky Way galaxy. The texture indicates the orientation of the galactic magnetic field.

NASA'sStardust Navigation Camera captured this anaglyph of the comet Wild 2. 3D glasses are necessary to view this image.

Seminoma-type testicular cancer visualized by ultrasound.

On Sept. 7, the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite passed over Hurricane Irma at approximately 11 20 am local time. The MISR instrument comprises nine cameras that view the Earth at different angles, and since it takes roughly seven minutes for all nine cameras to capture the same location, the motion of the clouds between images allows scientists to calculate the wind speed at the cloud tops. This stereo anaglyph combines two of the MISR angles to show a three-dimensional view of Irma. You will need red-blue glasses to view the anaglyph; place the red lens over your left eye. At this time, Irma's eye was located approximately 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of the Dominican Republic and 140 miles (230 kilometers) north of its capital, Santo Domingo. Irma was a powerful Category 5 hurricane, with wind speeds at the ocean surface up to 185 miles (300 kilometers) per hour. The MISR data show that at cloud top, winds near the eye wall (the mo

Artwork of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) sequences.

Chromatogram, 3D View

Palmitoyloleoyl PE (POPE) lipid bilayer, computer simulation. This is a model of the phospholipid bilayer of the inner bacterial membrane.

String of Pearls in Saturn's Atmosphere

Galaxy, space and dust cloud in universe on black background with light, pattern and color in solar system. Cosmos, infinity and planets in milky way with nebula shine, dark sky and glow in aerospace

A large flare and coronal mass ejection stream out from the Sun as seen from the this coronagraph taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). The white circle represents the size and position of the Sun.

Heart, CT scan

This image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveals the wind patterns within a large vortex that was spawned by a giant northern storm on Saturn. The arrows indicate the local direction of the winds.

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