Countless Dreams by Abi Ashra (Tumblr)

Europa, moon of Jupiter, observed by the Galileo probe on September 7, 1996.

NGC 3256 - the relict of a collision of two separate galaxies that took place in a distant past

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A cosmic megamaser

Callisto, Jupiter’s heavily-cratered Galilean moon that’s around 99% as large as Mercury but only a third as massive, bears a striking resemblance to that planet.

via reddit

Mars Olympus Mons

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IC 5201

Astro-pointillism

On a clear evening in April of 1789, the renowned astronomer William Herschel continued his unrelenting survey of the night sky, hunting for new cosmic objects — and found cause to celebrate! Lengthening his impressive list of cosmic discoveries yet again, the astronomer spotted this bright spiral galaxy, named NGC 4707, lurking in the constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dog). NGC 4707 lies roughly 22 million light-years from Earth. Over two centuries later, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is able to view the same galaxy in far greater detail than Herschel could, allowing us to appreciate the intricacies and characteristics of NGC 4707 as never before.   Herschel himself reportedly described NGC 4707 as a “small, stellar” galaxy; while it is classified as a spiral (type Sm), its overall shape, centre, and spiral arms are very loose and undefined, and its central bulge is either very small or non-existent. It instead appears as a rough sprinkling of stars and bright flashes of blue on a dark canvas, as if a pointillist painter had dotted the cosmos with small pinpricks of bright paint. The blue smudges seen across the frame highlight regions of recent or ongoing star formation, with newborn stars glowing in bright, intense shades of cyan and turquoise.

Pluto’s heart

This high-resolution image captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shows the bright expanse of the western lobe of Pluto’s “heart,” or Sputnik Planitia, which is rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane ices.

Red Spider Nebula

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Messier (M)83 Galaxy [6918x4500] : Dreamxtreme || ourspaceisbeautiful.tumblr.com

The Cartwheel Galaxy, ESO 350-40

The Cartwheel Galaxy is a distant galaxy located 400 million light years away in the southern constellation Sculptor. It features a unique ring structure, most likely as a result of a head-on collision 200 million years ago with a smaller intruder galaxy that passed though the very core of the larger galaxy. The density wave set in motion by the passage of the intruder is visible as intense starburst activity along the edge of a massive ring that is slowly making its way outwards from the centre, like a ripple on a pond. The galaxy is part of a small group of four, with the other members being the smaller blue and yellow galaxies right next to the Cartwheel and another companion a little further north (down). The latter is believed to be the intruder galaxy. In fact, high resolution radio observations have identified a trail of neutral hydrogen gas between the Cartwheel and the intruder, strongly suggesting that this is indeed the culprit now fleeing the scene.

Arp 240 - A Bridge between Spiral Galaxies from Hubble

via reddit

NGC 4631: The Whale Galaxy

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M45 Pleiades - 12.5 min exposure - by Scott Ainslie Hubert

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