2009 - 20 Astounding Photos of Space
1/ This image provided by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds. The festive portrait is the most detailed view of a young stellar grouping, called R136 in the 30 Doradus Nebula
2/ This image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows an area in the northwest region of the large Iris Nebula which seems to be clogged with cosmic dust, looking like cotton wool
3/ A Hubble false-colour image of glowing gas and dark dust clouds in IC 1795, a star-forming region in the constellation Cassiopeia. Located just over 6,000 light-years away, the complex sprawls along the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy
4/ The Cartwheel galaxy as seen by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's Far Ultraviolet detector, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory
5/ An image taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope shows a celestial object that looks like a delicate butterfly
6/ The Crab Nebula, one of the most studied objects in the sky. X-ray data from Chandra provide significant clues to the workings of this mighty cosmic "generator," which is producing energy at the rate of 100,000 suns
7/ Observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory are combined to produce an unprecedented image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy
8/ This image, taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, shows stars bursting to life in the chaotic Carina Nebula
9/ This image reveals a small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri, which boasts nearly 10 million stars
10/ The emission nebula NGC 6164, which was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the centre of the cosmic cloud, the star is a mere three to four million years old
11/ An image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows the most detailed view of star birth in the nearby spiral galaxy M83, nicknamed the Southern Pinwheel
12/ This image from combined data from the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope shows a pair of colliding galaxies called NGC 6240 in a rare, short-lived phase of their evolution just before they merge into a single, larger galaxy
13/ Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have captured a new image of the Trifid Nebula, showing just why it is a firm favourite of astronomers. This massive star factory is 5500 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius
14/ It looks like a soap bubble, but this is a planetary nebula caused when stars die and blast out a glowing shell of gas and plasma. Known as the "Soap Bubble Nebula", this rare planetary nebula PN G75.5 1.7 was discovered by an amateur astronomer
15/ From his garden in the New Forest, Professor Greg Parker takes images of deep space which are now collected in his book Star Vistas. Included in the book is this image of NGC 2264 or as it is more commonly known, The Christmas Tree Nebula
16/ Stephan's Quintet, a compact group of galaxies discovered about 130 years ago and located about 280 million light years from Earth
17/ A European Southern Observatory (ESO) handout photo of a new image of the Eagle Nebula, a stellar nursery filled with clusters of infant stars, 7,000 light years away towards the constellation of Serpans (the Snake)
18/ The Flame Nebula, a spectacular star-forming cloud of gas and dust in the constellation of Orion. The image was taken by the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (Vista), based at the Paranal Observatory in Chile
19/ A galaxy called NGC 1097, which is located 50 million light-years away. The "eye" at the centre of the galaxy is actually a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. Image obtained by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope
20/ The large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is NGC 5194. Its arms and dust lanes sweep in front of its companion galaxy, NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant
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