NASA’s 5 best images of the Sun, galaxies and nebulas far from Earth | See photos

NASA images:Our planet Earth is part of a giant solar system, located in a gigantic galaxy called the Milky Way. Our home galaxy is a large spiral galaxy with a stellar disk spanning over 100,000 light years. Surprisingly, ours is not alone, as space contains numerous galaxies that host thousands of planets and stars.

Space agencies such as NASA and ESA continue to share images of the Sun, nebulae and our neighbouring galaxies, including the one located thousands of light years away from the Milky Way.

The Small Magellanic Cloud is one of the closest galaxies to our planet. Milky Way:It’s “only” 210,000 light-years away. Nestled in the Small Magellanic Cloud is this spectacular star cluster, which is releasing light and energy into the nebula surrounding it.

This photo of NASA’s Hubble Telescope It combines observations of the star cluster in ultraviolet and visible light; these bright blue stars emit ultraviolet rays that are then captured by Hubble’s delicate instruments.

Studying this star cluster in ultraviolet light is helping scientists understand how the birth of stars shapes the interstellar space around them.

In these images from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Andromeda galaxy consumes streams of gas and dust.

⁣When supermassive black holes “eat,” the material heats up just before it falls in, creating incredible light shows — sometimes brighter than an entire galaxy full of stars. But the black hole at the center of Andromeda (one of our closest galactic neighbors) is a “silent” eater, meaning the little light it does emit doesn’t vary significantly in brightness. This suggests it’s consuming a small but steady stream of material, rather than large clumps. ⁣

X-rays radiate from the Sun in this image showing observations from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuStar) superimposed on an image taken by our Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Taken in 2014, this was the first NuStar image of the Sun, which covers the western edge of the star.

The NuStar data, shown in green and blue, reveal high-energy emissions such as X-rays; the red channel represents ultraviolet light captured by SDO, which shows the presence of cooler material in the solar atmosphere. SDO continues to study the Sun from its position in geostationary orbit, 22,000 miles (or 36,000 km) above Earth, the third planet from our home star.

This tangled planetary nebula is the final stage of a mid-sized star like our Sun, billions of years from now. As it consumes the last of its core fuel, the dying star expels much of its outer layer, creating the twisted filaments seen here.

Don’t be confused by the name: planetary nebulae actually have nothing to do with planets. When early astronomers first observed them through telescopes, they appeared large and fuzzy, like some planets, and the name stuck. This sharp image was taken through a much more powerful telescope: NASA Hubble Observatory.

Eta Carinae may be about to explode, but no one knows when. It could be in the relatively near future, although (astronomically speaking) that may be a million years away. With a mass about 100 times that of our Sun, Eta Carinae is an excellent candidate for a full-blown supernova, or the explosion of a star.

The fireworks began in the 1840s, when Eta Carinae underwent a titanic eruption in Earth’s skies, called the Great Eruption, which made it the second-brightest star visible for more than a decade. In fact, Eta Carinae was so bright that for a time it became an important navigation star for mariners in the southern seas. It is also the only star currently believed to emit natural laser light.