#astroimages

This is the Silver Coin Galaxy! 💫💫💫

This intermediate spiral galaxy was found when famous astronomers Caroline Herschel was searching for comets in the night sky. At the center of the populated Sculptor galaxy group, this galaxy is one of the brightest and most active galaxies in the Milky Way’s vicinity! ✨✨✨

The Exploding Galaxy is a starburst galaxy which may have been deformed by M81, another neighboring galaxy. 🌌

Starting in April 2010, the Exploding Galaxy started sending out strange radio signals and scientists to this day don’t understand them yet... 👽👽👽

This is the Lagoon Nebula! 💗💗💗

The beautiful lagoon shaped portion is created from aggressive stellar winds pushing the nebulae’s gas and dust aside. Many of the stars here are young, hot O-type stars that are more than 200,000 times brighter than the Sun! ✨✨✨

This is the Skull Nebula! 💀💀💀

The glow of this eerie nebula is perfect for Halloween! This planetary nebula has a binary star system with a third star orbiting it. The beautiful colors of this nebula come from the outer layers of a Sun-like star that died in an explosion! 👻👻👻

This is the Jewel Box! 💎💎💎

Located in the southern constellation Crux and visible to the naked eye, the Jewel Box contains a diverse variety of blue and red stars. The unique name of “Jewel Box” was given by John Herschel, standing out amidst the nearby dark nebula named the Coal Sack! 💫💫💫

This is the Heart Nebula! 💖💖💖

Happy Valentine’s Day! To celebrate this occasion, here is the beautiful Heart Nebula, an emission nebula with dark dust lanes and glowing red hydrogen gas. The heart shape of the nebula is driven by stellar winds from the hot stars inside, some of which have masses up to 50 times the Sun! 💕💕💕

This is Comet PanSTARRS! 🌠🌠🌠

This gif was created throughout the night of July 25th and you can see the potentially interstellar comet in motion. 

This is the Triangulum Galaxy! 🌌🌌🌌

Despite being a spiral galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy has very little star formation as shown through infrared observations from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). However, a region known as NGC 604 is the largest stellar nursery between itself, the Milky Way, and the Andromeda Galaxy! 🔥🔥🔥