Here are 25 space photos that could change the way you see our solar system, galaxy, and universe.
Let's start close to home. Even here, you can see that space is huge — bigger than you probably realize. That's Earth on the right, and the moon is the tiny speck on the left.
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured this image of the Earth and the moon from a distance of 890,000 on October 13, 2022.
NASA/Goddard/SwRI
Jupiter is much, much further and much, much larger.
Jupiter, as photographed by the Juno spacecraft, in September 2017.
NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran
Jupiter's most famous cyclone alone, the Great Red Spot, is larger than Earth.
Scientists animated this Juno image of the Great Red Spot based on velocity data from the spacecraft and models of the storm's winds.
The sun dwarfs all the planets, though. In this photo of a small portion of the sun's surface, each cell of boiling plasma is about the size of Texas.
A movie from the Inouye Solar Telescope shows how the sun's plasma moves across its surface.
NSO/NSF/AURA
The planets in our solar system are even more fascinating and complex than you may think. Saturn isn't the only one with rings. See Uranus's rings below?
An infrared view of Uranus over two days in July 2004.
Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/W.W. Keck Observatory
Neptune also has a set of rings.
The James Webb Space Telescope's image of Neptune and its rings. Neptune has 14 known satellites, and seven of them are visible in this image.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Other planets have auroras, too, just like the aurora borealis and aurora australis here on Earth.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope photographed Saturn's southern aurora in ultraviolet light on January 24, 26, and 28, 2005.
NASA/Hubble/Z. Levay and J. Clarke
In this infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope, you can see faint rings circling Jupiter and auroras glowing at its poles.
Wide-field view of Jupiter, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt
Some of Saturn's and Jupiter's moons show clear signs of underground oceans, where scientists think alien life could lurk. On Enceladus, plumes of water visibly shoot through cracks in the surface ice.
In this real image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, backlighting from the sun spectacularly illuminates Enceladus' jets of water ice.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
Those are just the worlds we know about. According to NASA, on average each star has at least one planet. You can see one orbiting the star in this image. The planet is a tiny dot on the right, within the disc of material surrounding the star.
A star surrounded by a circumplanetary disc, with a planet visible on the right, captured by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Benisty et al.
What's more, new stars are being born all the time in nurseries where dense clouds of gas and dust collapse into stars. The famous Pillars of Creation are one such nursery.
These towering tendrils of cosmic dust and gas, known as the Pillars of Creation, sit at the heart of the Eagle Nebula.
NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope recently imaged the Pillars in powerful infrared for the first time, revealing new stars hidden behind the dust.
The Pillars of Creation in near-infrared-light, imaged by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI).
New stars also form when galaxies collide, slowly moving into each other and compressing the gas and dust that fills their interstellar space. Space telescopes have imaged many collisions like this, including the three merging galaxies below.
A triple-galaxy merger captured by the Hubble Space Telescope,
ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel, Dark Energy Survey, DOE, FNAL, DECam, CTIO, NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, SDSS Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt
Stars regularly explode and die, too, creating powerful, bright supernovas.
A bubble of debris from a supernova, imaged with X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/GSFC/B. J. Williams et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI
The Hubble Space Telescope recently captured three phases of a supernova at once. A massive object was bending space-time and reflecting three different images of the explosion, at three different points in time.
The different colors of the cooling supernova at three different stages in its evolution.
NASA, ESA, STScI, Wenlei Chen (UMN), Patrick Kelly (UMN), Hubble Frontier Fields
Supernovas often collapse into black holes. You've probably seen the first photo ever taken of a black hole...
The first image ever made of a black hole, by the Event Horizon Telescope, released in April 2019.
Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration/Maunakea Observatories via AP
... but did you see the black hole at the center of our galaxy? Scientists think every galaxy has a black hole at its core.
The first image of Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
Event Horizon Telescope collaboration
Sometimes black holes merge, too, creating supermassive monsters.
This image shows close-up (left) and wide (right) views of the two bright galactic nuclei, each housing a supermassive black hole, in NGC 7727, a galaxy located 89 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Aquarius.
ESO/Voggel et al.; ESO/VST ATLAS team. Acknowledgement: Durham University/CASU/WFAU
There are a mind-bending number of galaxies out there — up to 200 billion, astronomers estimate. Each is filled with its own stars and planets.
Stephan's Quintet is shown here taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
This long-exposure image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captures thousands of galaxies. If you held a grain of sand at arm's length, that would represent the speck of universe you see in this image.
The James Webb Space Telescope's first deep field infrared image, released July 11, 2022.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Webb has peered further into the universe than any prior telescope. This is basically looking back in time, since it takes billions of years for light to travel from these galaxies.
Webb captured the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in this mosaic image stretching 340 light-years across.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team
In July, Webb spotted the earliest, most distant galaxy ever detected. Scientists believe it emerged 235 million years after the Big Bang. That means it's closer to the beginning of the universe than we've ever seen before.
Color image of CEERS-93316, a galaxy researchers believe emerged only 235 million years after the Big Bang.
CEERS/UOE/SOPHIE JEWELL/CLARA POLLOCK
Astronomers only know of two visitors we've ever had from other star systems: A probable rock called 'Oumuamua, and a comet that zipped past the sun from interstellar space, in 2017 and 2019.
The comet 2I/Borisov, the second interstellar object ever detected in our solar system. Blue and red dashes are background stars that appear to streak as the comet moves.
Gemini Observatory/NSF/AURA/Composite image by Travis Rector
Only two human spacecraft have ever left our solar system: NASA's Voyager probes. The first probe snapped this famous photo of Earth on its way out.
The Pale Blue Dot, a photograph of Earth taken February 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles from the sun.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
This story was originally published in November 2022.
Yes, Earth, right there. Carl Sagan called this the "pale blue dot," writing: "That's here. That's home. That's us." Most of us will only experience the rest of the universe through photos.
