25 Most Incredible Photos of Our Universe

photo – NASA/ESA

Also known as the Bug Nebula, this interstellar cloud of dust and has can be found about 4,000 light years from the Earth. The dying star in the middle of this fiery explosion is actually 200,000 degrees Kelvin.

photo – Hubble Space Telescope

Just like anything else in the universe, galaxies can collide into one another. The two captured above will eventually come to form one elliptical galaxy but the process will probably take over a billion years.

photo – NASA/ESA

While some galaxies just go ahead and crash into each other head on, others will try to steal one another’s stars first. What you see above is actually known as tidal stripping where the larger galaxy sucks the stars out of the smaller galaxy before the two merge into one after billions of years.

photo – Hubble Space Telescope

Found in the Large Magellanic cloud, one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, this crowded cluster of young stars gives us a look into the intensity of the star formation process.

photo – Hubble Space Telescope

As the first planetary nebula to be discovered in the night sky, the Cat’s Eye is is also one of the most complex. These type of nebulae occur when dying stars eject their gaseous outer layers into space.

photo – Hubble Space Telescope

In 2002 the star V838 Monocerotis suddenly became 600,000 times brighter than the Sun. In fact, for a few weeks it was the brightest object in our galaxy. Moreover, due to something known as a light echo illuminating its surrounding rings of gas, the star appeared to be expanding rapidly as well. It has since died down, however, and astronomers are still no sure what caused the outburst.

photo – NASA/ESA

This colorful image shows an extremely volatile region of the Large Magellanic Cloud near our galaxy, the Milky Way. The red gasses you see are hydrogen, the green are oxygen, and the blue “diamonds” are actually some of the largest known stars in the universe with several being hundreds of times bigger than the Sun.

photo – Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)

This infrared picture captured by Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer shows the Heart Nebula on the right and the Soul Nebula on the left. Located about 6,000 light years from Earth the image above spans a distance of about 580 light years.

photo – Hubble Space Telescope

Home to Eta Carinae, a star four million time brighter than the Sun, the Carina Nebula is a cloud of gas 300 light years in length that can found around 7.500 light years from the Earth.

photo – Hubble Space Telescope

There are few things in this universe that can make you feel smaller than this now famous image of what has come to be known as the “Pillars of Creation”. An aptly named cloud of dust and gas, it is responsible for the birth of millions of new stars and can be found 6,500 light years away from Earth. Each one of those gaseous arms you are looking at are in fact trillions of miles long.