A new, dynamic portrait of our Milky Way galaxy shows a frenzy of gas, charged particles and dust as seen by the European Space Agency Planck mission.

A contingent of young stars and star-forming gas clouds is sticking out of one of the Milky Way's spiral arms like a splinter protruding from a plank of wood. Stretching some 3,000 light-years, this is the first major structure identified with such a dramatically different orientation relative to the arm. The background image shows the location of the splinter in the Milky Way. The yellow region in the center of the image is the galaxy's bright and crowded center. The galaxy's arms spiral around the center, and are full of stars and star-forming clouds of gas and dust. A key property of spiral arms is how tightly they wind around a galaxy. This characteristic is measured by the arm's pitch angle. A circle has a pitch angle of 0 degrees; as the spiral becomes more open, the pitch angle increases. Most models of the Milky Way suggest that the Sagittarius Arm forms a spiral that has a pitch angle of about 12 degrees, but the protruding structure has a pitch angle of nearly 60 degrees. Similar structures – sometimes called spurs or feathers – are commonly found jutting out of the arms of other spiral galaxies. For decades scientists have wondered whether our Milky Way's spiral arms are also dotted with these structures or if they are relatively smooth. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24576

Images of the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are overlaid on a map of the surrounding area, our galaxy's galactic halo. Dark blue represents a low concentration of stars; lighter blues indicate increasing stellar density. The map spans from about 200,000 light-years to 325,000 light-years from the galactic center and provides the first clear view of the major features in this region. The LMC is orbiting the Milky Way and will eventually merge with it. The high concentration in the lower half is a wake created by the LMC as it sails through the galactic halo. In the upper half of the image, astronomers observed an apparent excess of stars compared to the southern hemisphere. This is evidence that the Large Magellanic Cloud has pulled the Milky Way disk significantly off-center. The galactic halo can be thought of as a bubble surrounding the disk. The number of stars per area is highest near the center of the bubble, and drops off moving away from the center. If the Milky Way were in the center of the halo, astronomers would see an approximately equal number of stars in both hemispheres. But because the Milky Way has been pulled away from the center, when astronomers look into the northern hemisphere, they see more of the central, highly populated area. Comparing these two views, there is an apparent excess of stars in the northern hemisphere. The image of the Milky Way used here is from the ESA (European Space Agency) Gaia mission: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1908e/. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24571

This composite image comes from the ESA Planck shows a festive portrait of our Milky Way galaxy shows a mishmash of gas, charged particles and several types of dust.

In visible light, the bulk of our Milky Way galaxy stars are eclipsed behind thick clouds of galactic dust and gas. But to the infrared eyes of NASA Spitzer Space Telescope, distant stars and dust clouds shine with unparalleled clarity and color.

Our Milky Way is a dusty place. So dusty that we cannot see the center of the galaxy in visible light. Thanks to NASA Spitzer Space Telescope excellent resolution, the dusty features within the galactic center are seen in unprecedented detail.

More than 800,000 frames from NASA Spitzer Space Telescope were stitched together to create this infrared portrait of dust and stars radiating in the inner Milky Way.

More than 444,580 frames from NASA Spitzer Space Telescope were stitched together to create this portrait of the raging star-formation occurring in the inner Milky Way.

Our Milky Way galaxy is ablaze with dust in this new all-sky map from Planck, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions. The towers of fiery colors are actually dust in the galaxy and beyond that has been polarized.

This artist concept illustrates the new view of the Milky Way. The galaxy two major arms can be seen attached to the ends of a thick central bar, while the two now-demoted minor arms are less distinct and located between the major arms.

iss071e256593 (July 1, 2024) --- The Milky Way appears in the vastness of space behind the dimly lit SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft docked to the Harmony module's space-facing port on the International Space Station.

This image shows the star-studded center of the Milky Way towards the constellation of Sagittarius. The crowded center of our galaxy contains numerous complex and mysterious objects that are usually hidden at optical wavelengths by clouds of dust — but many are visible here in these infrared observations from Hubble. However, the most famous cosmic object in this image still remains invisible: the monster at our galaxy’s heart called Sagittarius A*. Astronomers have observed stars spinning around this supermassive black hole (located right in the center of the image), and the black hole consuming clouds of dust as it affects its environment with its enormous gravitational pull. Infrared observations can pierce through thick obscuring material to reveal information that is usually hidden to the optical observer. This is the best infrared image of this region ever taken with Hubble, and uses infrared archive data from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, taken in September 2011. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Brammer <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagram.com/nasagoddard?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>

The magnetic field of our Milky Way galaxy as seen by ESA Planck satellite. This image was compiled from the first all-sky observations of polarized light emitted by interstellar dust in the Milky Way.

Astronomers using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, are helping to trace the shape of our Milky Way galaxy's spiral arms. This illustration shows where WISE data revealed clusters of young stars shrouded in dust, called embedded clusters, which are known to reside in spiral arms. The bars represent uncertainties in the data. The nearly 100 clusters shown here were found in the arms called Perseus, Sagittarius-Carina, and Outer -- three of the galaxy's four proposed primary arms. Our sun resides in a spur to an arm, or a minor arm, called Orion Cygnus. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19341

NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has captured a new high-energy X-ray view (magenta, Figure 1) of the bustling center of our Milky Way galaxy. The smaller circle shows the area where the NuSTAR image was taken -- the very center of our galaxy, where a giant black hole resides. That region is enlarged to the right, in the larger circle, to show the NuSTAR data. The NuSTAR picture is one of the most detailed ever taken of the center of our galaxy in high-energy X-rays. The X-ray light, normally invisible to our eyes, has been assigned the color magenta. The brightest point of light near the center of the X-ray picture is coming from a spinning dead star, known as a pulsar, which is near the giant black hole. While the pulsar's X-ray emissions were known before, scientists were surprised to find more high-energy X-rays than predicted in the surrounding regions, seen here as the elliptical haze. Astronomers aren't sure what the sources of the extra X-rays are, but one possibility is a population of dead stars. The background picture was captured in infrared light by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The NuSTAR image has an X-ray energy range of 20 to 40 kiloelectron volts. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19334

This dazzling infrared image from NASA Spitzer Space Telescope shows hundreds of thousands of stars crowded into the swirling core of our spiral Milky Way galaxy.

This image from NASA Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows NGC 6744, one of the galaxies most similar to our Milky Way in the local universe.

NASA Spitzer Space Telescope whizzes in front of a brilliant, infrared view of the Milky Way galaxy plane in this artistic depiction.

Our Milky Way galaxy and its small companions are surrounded by a giant halo of million-degree gas (seen in blue in this artists' rendition) that is only visible to X-ray telescopes in space. University of Michigan astronomers discovered that this massive hot halo spins in the same direction as the Milky Way disk and at a comparable speed. Read more: <a href="http://go.nasa.gov/29VgLdK" rel="nofollow">go.nasa.gov/29VgLdK</a> Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss/Ohio State/A Gupta et al <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagrid.me/nasagoddard/?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>

This infrared image from NASA Spitzer Space Telescope shows three baby stars in the bustling center of our Milky Way galaxy. The three stars are the first to be discovered in the region.

Caption: Artist's view of night sky from a hypothetical planet within a young Milky Way-like galaxy 10 billion years ago, the sky are ablaze with star birth. Pink clouds of gas harbor newborn stars, and bluish-white, young star clusters litter the landscape. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Z. Levay (STScI) More info: In one of the most comprehensive multi-observatory galaxy surveys yet, astronomers find that galaxies like our Milky Way underwent a stellar “baby boom,” churning out stars at a prodigious rate, about 30 times faster than today. Our sun, however, is a late “boomer.” The Milky Way’s star-birthing frenzy peaked 10 billion years ago, but our sun was late for the party, not forming until roughly 5 billion years ago. By that time the star formation rate in our galaxy had plunged to a trickle. Missing the party, however, may not have been so bad. The sun’s late appearance may actually have fostered the growth of our solar system’s planets. Elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were more abundant later in the star-forming boom as more massive stars ended their lives early and enriched the galaxy with material that served as the building blocks of planets and even life on Earth. Astronomers don’t have baby pictures of our Milky Way’s formative years to trace the history of stellar growth so they studied galaxies similar in mass to our Milky Way, found in deep surveys of the universe. The farther into the universe astronomers look, the further back in time they are seeing, because starlight from long ago is just arriving at Earth now. From those surveys, stretching back in time more than 10 billion years, researchers assembled an album of images containing nearly 2,000 snapshots of Milky Way-like galaxies. The new census provides the most complete picture yet of how galaxies like the Milky Way grew over the past 10 billion years into today’s majestic spiral galaxies. The multi-wavelength study spans ultraviolet to far-infrared light, combining observations from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory, and ground-based telescopes, including the Magellan Baade Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Read more: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/our-sun-came-late-to-the-milky-way-s-star-birth-party/" rel="nofollow">www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/our-sun-came-late-to-the-mil...</a> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagrid.me/nasagoddard/?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>

A team of volunteers from the general public has pored over observations from NASA Spitzer Space Telescope and discovered more than 5,000 bubbles in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured two festive-looking nebulas, situated so as to appear as one. They reside in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy. Intense radiation from the brilliant central stars is heating hydrogen in each of the nebulas, causing them to glow red. The nebulas, together, are called NGC 248. They were discovered in 1834 by the astronomer Sir John Herschel. NGC 248 is about 60 light-years long and 20 light-years wide. It is among a number of glowing hydrogen nebulas in the dwarf satellite galaxy, which is located approximately 200,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Tucana. The image is part of a study called Small Magellanic Cloud Investigation of Dust and Gas Evolution (SMIDGE). Astronomers are using Hubble to probe the Milky Way satellite to understand how dust is different in galaxies that have a far lower supply of heavy elements needed to create dust. The Small Magellanic Cloud has between a fifth and a tenth of the amount of heavy elements that the Milky Way does. Because it is so close, astronomers can study its dust in great detail, and learn about what dust was like earlier in the history of the universe. “It is important for understanding the history of our own galaxy, too,” explained the study’s principal investigator, Dr. Karin Sandstrom of the University of California, San Diego. Most of the star formation happened earlier in the universe, at a time where there was a much lower percentage of heavy elements than there is now. “Dust is a really critical part of how a galaxy works, how it forms stars,” said Sandstrom. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, K. Sandstrom (University of California, San Diego), and the SMIDGE team <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagrid.me/nasagoddard/?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>

NASA image release Thursday, May 31, 2012 <b>To view a video from this Hubble release go to: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/7309212940">www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/7309212940</a> </b> Caption: This illustration shows a stage in the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, as it will unfold over the next several billion years. In this image, representing Earth's night sky in 3.75 billion years, Andromeda (left) fills the field of view and begins to distort the Milky Way with tidal pull. Credit: NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger To read more go to: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/milky-way-collide.html" rel="nofollow">www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/milky-way-colli...</a> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagrid.me/nasagoddard/?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way. It is located about 25,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), close to the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is, like its neighbor the Quintuplet Cluster, a fairly young astronomical object at between two and four million years old. The Arches cluster is so dense that in a region with a radius equal to the distance between the sun and its nearest star there would be over 100,000 stars! At least 150 stars within the cluster are among the brightest ever discovered in the Milky Way. These stars are so bright and massive that they will burn their fuel within a short time (on a cosmological scale that means just a few million years). Then they will die in spectacular supernova explosions. Due to the short lifetime of the stars in the cluster the gas between the stars contains an unusually high amount of heavier elements, which were produced by earlier generations of stars. Despite its brightness the Arches Cluster cannot be seen with the naked eye. The visible light from the cluster is completely obscured by gigantic clouds of dust in this region. To make the cluster visible astronomers have to use detectors which can collect light from the X-ray, infrared, and radio bands, as these wavelengths can pass through the dust clouds. This observation shows the Arches Cluster in the infrared and demonstrates the leap in Hubble’s performance since its 1999 image of same object. Credit: NASA/ESA <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagrid.me/nasagoddard/?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>

This composite image shows examples of galaxies similar to our Milky Way at various stages of construction over a time span of 11 billion years. The galaxies are arranged according to time. Those on the left reside nearby; those at far right existed when the cosmos was about 2 billion years old. The bluish glow from young stars dominates the color of the galaxies on the right. The galaxies at left are redder from the glow of older stellar populations. Astronomers found the distant galaxies in two Hubble Space Telescope surveys: 3D-HST and the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey, or CANDELS. The observations were made in visible and near-infrared light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. The nearby galaxies were taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This image traces Milky Way-like galaxies over most of cosmic history, revealing how they evolve over time. Hubble's sharp vision resolved the galaxies' shapes, showing that their bulges and disks grew simultaneously. Credit: NASA, ESA, P. van Dokkum (Yale University), S. Patel (Leiden University), and the 3D-HST Team <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagram.com/nasagoddard?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>

Filamentary structures in our Milky Way galaxy are apparent at large scales, as shown in this ESA image from Planck image, on the right, and small scales as seen the Herschel image on the left.

This artist concept illustrates the frenzied activity at the core of our Milky Way galaxy. The galactic center hosts a supermassive black hole in the region known as Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, with a mass of about four million times that of our sun.

A view from the bustling center of our galactic metropolis. NASA Spitzer Space Telescope offers a fresh, infrared view of the frenzied scene at the center of our Milky Way, revealing what lies behind the dust.

This vibrant image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. The infrared image, a mosaic of more than 100,000 individual tiles, offers astronomers a unique chance to study the lifecycle of stars and dust in a single galaxy. Nearly one million objects are revealed for the first time in this Spitzer view, which represents about a 1,000-fold improvement in sensitivity over previous space-based missions. Most of the new objects are dusty stars of various ages populating the Large Magellanic Cloud; the rest are thought to be background galaxies. The blue color in the picture, seen most prominently in the central bar, represents starlight from older stars. The chaotic, bright regions outside this bar are filled with hot, massive stars buried in thick blankets of dust. The red clouds contain cooler interstellar gas and molecular-sized dust grains illuminated by ambient starlight. The Large Magellanic Cloud, located 160,000 light-years from Earth, is one of a handful of dwarf galaxies that orbit our own Milky Way. It is approximately one-third as wide as the Milky Way, and, if it could be seen in its entirety, would cover the same amount of sky as a grid of about 480 full moons. About one-third of the whole galaxy can be seen in the Spitzer image. This picture is a composite of infrared light captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera. Light with wavelengths of 8 and 5.8 microns is red and orange: 4.5-micron light is green; and 3.6-micron light is blue. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07136

In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, NASA's Great Observatories -- the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory -- have produced a matched trio of images of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy. Each image shows the telescope's different wavelength view of the galactic center region, illustrating the unique science each observatory conducts. In this spectacular image, observations using infrared light and X-ray light see through the obscuring dust and reveal the intense activity near the galactic core. Note that the center of the galaxy is located within the bright white region to the right of and just below the middle of the image. The entire image width covers about one-half a degree, about the same angular width as the full moon. Spitzer's infrared-light observations provide a detailed and spectacular view of the galactic center region [Figure 1 (top frame of poster)]. The swirling core of our galaxy harbors hundreds of thousands of stars that cannot be seen in visible light. These stars heat the nearby gas and dust. These dusty clouds glow in infrared light and reveal their often dramatic shapes. Some of these clouds harbor stellar nurseries that are forming new generations of stars. Like the downtown of a large city, the center of our galaxy is a crowded, active, and vibrant place. Although best known for its visible-light images, Hubble also observes over a limited range of infrared light [Figure 2 (middle frame of poster)]. The galactic center is marked by the bright patch in the lower right. Along the left side are large arcs of warm gas that have been heated by clusters of bright massive stars. In addition, Hubble uncovered many more massive stars across the region. Winds and radiation from these stars create the complex structures seen in the gas throughout the image.This sweeping panorama is one of the sharpest infrared pictures ever made of the galactic center region. X-rays detected by Chandra expose a wealth of exotic objects and high-energy features [Figure 3 (bottom frame of poster)]. In this image, pink represents lower energy X-rays and blue indicates higher energy. Hundreds of small dots show emission from material around black holes and other dense stellar objects. A supermassive black hole -- some four million times more massive than the Sun -- resides within the bright region in the lower right. The diffuse X-ray light comes from gas heated to millions of degrees by outflows from the supermassive black hole, winds from giant stars, and stellar explosions. This central region is the most energetic place in our galaxy. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12348

A leggy cosmic creature comes out of hiding in this new infrared view from NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The spiral beauty, called IC 342 and sometimes the hidden galaxy, is shrouded behind our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

This infrared image from NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer shows exceptionally cold, dense cloud cores seen in silhouette against the bright diffuse infrared glow of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

This vibrant image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. The infrared image, a mosaic of 300,000 individual tiles, offers astronomers a unique chance to study the lifecycle of stars and dust in a single galaxy. Nearly one million objects are revealed for the first time in this Spitzer view, which represents about a 1,000-fold improvement in sensitivity over previous space-based missions. Most of the new objects are dusty stars of various ages populating the Large Magellanic Cloud; the rest are thought to be background galaxies. The blue color in the picture, seen most prominently in the central bar, represents starlight from older stars. The chaotic, bright regions outside this bar are filled with hot, massive stars buried in thick blankets of dust. The red color around these bright regions is from dust heated by stars, while the red dots scattered throughout the picture are either dusty, old stars or more distant galaxies. The greenish clouds contain cooler interstellar gas and molecular-sized dust grains illuminated by ambient starlight. Astronomers say this image allows them to quantify the process by which space dust -- the same stuff that makes up planets and even people -- is recycled in a galaxy. The picture shows dust at its three main cosmic hangouts: around the young stars, where it is being consumed (red-tinted, bright clouds); scattered about in the space between stars (greenish clouds); and in expelled shells of material from old stars (randomly-spaced red dots). The Large Magellanic Cloud, located 160,000 light-years from Earth, is one of a handful of dwarf galaxies that orbit our own Milky Way. It is approximately one-third as wide as the Milky Way, and, if it could be seen in its entirety, would cover the same amount of sky as a grid of about 480 full moons. About one-third of the entire galaxy can be seen in the Spitzer image. This picture is a composite of infrared light captured by Spitzer. Light with wavelengths of 3.6 (blue) and 8 (green) microns was captured by the telescope's infrared array camera; 24-micron light (red) was detected by the multiband imaging photometer. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07137

In 2010, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission observed the entire sky twice. Astronomers used these data to point out the X-shaped structure in the bulge of the Milky Way, contained in the small circle at center, as well as the inset image. The circled central portion covers roughly the area of sky that would be blocked by a basketball when held out at arm's length. Dustin Lang, an astronomer at the Dunlap Institute of the University of Toronto, used these data to make this map, which shows the full 360-degree panorama of the sky as seen by WISE. Lang collaborated with Melissa Ness, postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20699

iss044e045215 (08/09/2015)-- View (part of a time lapse sequence) of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy visible over an Earth limb as seen by the Expedition 44 crew. Astronaut Kjell Lindgren captured a lightning strike from space so bright that it lights up the space station’s solar panels. He posted this on Twitter and Instagram on Sept. 2 saying "Large lightning strike on Earth lights up or solar panels."

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Lights are reflected on the solar array panels of NASA's Kepler spacecraft during illumination testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Kepler will hunt for planets using a specialized one-meter diameter telescope called a photometer to measure the small changes in brightness caused by the transits. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Ball Aerospace and Technology workers conduct a light test on the solar array panels of NASA's Kepler spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Kepler will hunt for planets using a specialized one-meter diameter telescope called a photometer to measure the small changes in brightness caused by the transits. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Ball Aerospace and Technology workers conduct a light test on the solar array panels of NASA's Kepler spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Kepler will hunt for planets using a specialized one-meter diameter telescope called a photometer to measure the small changes in brightness caused by the transits. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Ball Aerospace and Technology workers conduct a light test on the solar array panels of NASA's Kepler spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Kepler will hunt for planets using a specialized one-meter diameter telescope called a photometer to measure the small changes in brightness caused by the transits. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A Ball Aerospace and Technology worker conducts a light sensor test on NASA's Kepler spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Kepler will hunt for planets using a specialized one-meter diameter telescope called a photometer to measure the small changes in brightness caused by the transits. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Ball Aerospace and Technology workers conduct a light test on the solar array panels of NASA's Kepler spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Kepler will hunt for planets using a specialized one-meter diameter telescope called a photometer to measure the small changes in brightness caused by the transits. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

NASA image release November 9, 2010 To view a video about this story go to: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5162413062">www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5162413062</a> Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, scientists have recently discovered a gigantic, mysterious structure in our galaxy. This never-before-seen feature looks like a pair of bubbles extending above and below our galaxy's center. But these enormous gamma-ray emitting lobes aren't immediately visible in the Fermi all-sky map. However, by processing the data, a group of scientists was able to bring these unexpected structures into sharp relief. Each lobe is 25,000 light-years tall and the whole structure may be only a few million years old. Within the bubbles, extremely energetic electrons are interacting with lower-energy light to create gamma rays, but right now, no one knows the source of these electrons. Are the bubbles remnants of a massive burst of star formation? Leftovers from an eruption by the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's center? Or or did these forces work in tandem to produce them? Scientists aren't sure yet, but the more they learn about this amazing structure, the better we'll understand the Milky Way. To learn more go to: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/new-structure.html" rel="nofollow">www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/new-structure.html</a> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> Credit: <a href="http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio</a>

Hidden behind a shroud of dust in the constellation Cygnus is a stellar nursery called DR21, which is giving birth to some of the most massive stars in our galaxy. Visible light images reveal no trace of this interstellar cauldron because of heavy dust obscuration. In fact, visible light is attenuated in DR21 by a factor of more than 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (ten thousand trillion heptillion). New images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope allow us to peek behind the cosmic veil and pinpoint one of the most massive natal stars yet seen in our Milky Way galaxy. The never-before-seen star is 100,000 times as bright as the Sun. Also revealed for the first time is a powerful outflow of hot gas emanating from this star and bursting through a giant molecular cloud. The colorful image is a large-scale composite mosaic assembled from data collected at a variety of different wavelengths. Views at visible wavelengths appear blue, near-infrared light is depicted as green, and mid-infrared data from the InfraRed Array Camera (IRAC) aboard NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is portrayed as red. The result is a contrast between structures seen in visible light (blue) and those observed in the infrared (yellow and red). A quick glance shows that most of the action in this image is revealed to the unique eyes of Spitzer. The image covers an area about two times that of a full moon. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA05734

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Ball Aerospace and Technology workers adjust the light cast on solar array panels during illumination testing of NASA's Kepler spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Kepler will hunt for planets using a specialized one-meter diameter telescope called a photometer to measure the small changes in brightness caused by the transits. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the spiral galaxy NGC 2841, located about 46 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. The galaxy is helping astronomers solve one of the oldest puzzles in astronomy: Why do galaxies look so smooth, with stars sprinkled evenly throughout? An international team of astronomers has discovered that rivers of young stars flow from their hot, dense stellar nurseries, dispersing out to form large, smooth distributions. This image is a composite of three different wavelengths from Spitzer's infrared array camera. The shortest wavelengths are displayed inblue, and mostly show the older stars in NGC 2841, as well as foreground stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. The cooler areas are highlighted in red, and show the dusty, gaseous regions of the galaxy. Blue shows infrared light of 3.6 microns, green represents 4.5-micron light and red, 8.0-micron light. The contribution from starlight measured at 3.6 microns has been subtracted from the 8.0-micron data to enhance the visibility of the dust features.The shortest wavelengths are displayed inblue, and mostly show the older stars in NGC 2841, as well as foreground stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12001

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The shipping container holding the Kepler spacecraft is placed on the tarmac outside Astrotech in Titusville, Fla., before being moved inside. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. The spacecraft will be processed at Astrotech before being carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5, 2009, atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., NASA's Kepler spacecraft is rolled into a clean room. The spacecraft will be rotated to vertical, uncovered and prepared for initial testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Chris Rhodes

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., a Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. technician Phil Mislinski checks data from the light sensor test conducted on NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Ball Aerospace was responsible for the flight segment design and fabrication. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The shipping container holding the Kepler spacecraft is lifted off the trailer outside Astrotech in Titusville, Fla. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. The spacecraft will be processed at Astrotech before being carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5, 2009, atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., a Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. worker conducts a light sensor test on NASA's Kepler spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- In a clean room at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., workers prepare to rotate NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Kepler will then be uncovered and prepared for initial testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Chris Rhodes

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., the open doors of the shipping container reveal NASA's Kepler spacecraft. After removal from the container, the spacecraft will be rotated to vertical, uncovered and prepared for initial testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Chris Rhodes

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., workers prepare the mobile stand for removal of NASA's Kepler spacecraft from its shipping container. After its removal, the spacecraft will be rotated to vertical, uncovered and prepared for initial testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Chris Rhodes

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., NASA's Kepler spacecraft is prepared for testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., NASA's Kepler spacecraft is prepared for testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., workers from Ball Aerospace check the Star Trackers on NASA's Kepler spacecraft before testing. Star Trackers are small aperture, space-qualified optical products which assure a spacecraft’s accurate navigation in space. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- In a clean room at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., workers prepare to rotate NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Kepler will then be uncovered and prepared for initial testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Chris Rhodes

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., a Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. worker conducts a light sensor test on NASA's Kepler spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The shipping container holding the Kepler spacecraft is placed on the tarmac outside Astrotech in Titusville, Fla., before being moved inside. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. The spacecraft will be processed at Astrotech before being carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5, 2009, atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., NASA's Kepler spacecraft is prepared for testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The shipping container holding the Kepler spacecraft is placed on the tarmac outside Astrotech in Titusville, Fla., before being moved inside. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. The spacecraft will be processed at Astrotech before being carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5, 2009, atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The shipping container holding the Kepler spacecraft is placed on the tarmac outside Astrotech in Titusville, Fla., before being moved inside. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. The spacecraft will be processed at Astrotech before being carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5, 2009, atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., NASA's Kepler spacecraft is prepared for testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., doors are opened on the shipping container holding NASA's Kepler spacecraft. After removal from the container, the spacecraft will be rotated to vertical, uncovered and prepared for initial testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Chris Rhodes

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., workers from Ball Aerospace check the star trackers on NASA's Kepler spacecraft before testing. Star Trackers are small aperture, space-qualified optical products which assure a spacecraft’s accurate navigation in space. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., a Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. worker conducts a light sensor test on NASA's Kepler spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A truck with the Kepler spacecraft in tow arrives at Astrotech in Titusville, Fla. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. The spacecraft will be processed at Astrotech before being carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5, 2009, atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., NASA's Kepler spacecraft is unbagged. The spacecraft will undergo initial testing before launch. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., a worker inspects the high-gain antenna on NASA's Kepler spacecraft in preparation for testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., a Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. technician Phil Mislinski checks data from the light sensor test conducted on NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Ball Aerospace was responsible for the flight segment design and fabrication. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., a Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. worker conducts a light sensor test on NASA's Kepler spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., NASA's Kepler spacecraft is rolled out of its shipping container. The spacecraft will be rotated to vertical, uncovered and prepared for initial testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Chris Rhodes

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., the shipping container holding NASA's Kepler spacecraft is moved into a clean room. After removal from the container, the spacecraft will be rotated to vertical, uncovered and prepared for initial testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Chris Rhodes

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., a Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. worker conducts a light sensor test on NASA's Kepler spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. .NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., doors are opened on the shipping container holding NASA's Kepler spacecraft. After removal from the container, the spacecraft will be rotated to vertical, uncovered and prepared for initial testing. A NASA Discovery mission, Kepler is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy. After processing at Astrotech, Kepler will be carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 5 atop a Delta II rocket. Photo credit: NASA/Chris Rhodes

iss072e646033 (Feb. 3, 2025) --- The Milky Way appears beyond Earth's horizon in this celestial photograph captured by NASA astronaut Don Pettit using a camera with low light and long duration settings as the International Space Station orbited 259 miles above the Coral Sea off the coast of Queensland, Australia.

iss072e646081 (Feb. 3, 2025) --- The Milky Way appears beyond Earth's horizon in this celestial photograph captured by NASA astronaut Don Pettit using a camera with low light and long duration settings as the International Space Station orbited 263 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

iss072e281196 (Nov. 28, 2024) --- This long-duration photograph looks out a window on the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft to the Milky Way as the International Space Station orbited 262 miles above the Pacific Ocean northeast of New Zealand. Credit: NASA/Don Pettit

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way. It is located about 25 000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), close to the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is, like its neighbour the Quintuplet Cluster, a fairly young astronomical object at between two and four million years old. The Arches cluster is so dense that in a region with a radius equal to the distance between the Sun and its nearest star there would be over 100 000 stars! At least 150 stars within the cluster are among the brightest ever discovered in the the Milky Way. These stars are so bright and massive, that they will burn their fuel within a short time, on a cosmological scale, just a few million years, and die in spectacular supernova explosions. Due to the short lifetime of the stars in the cluster, the gas between the stars contains an unusually high amount of heavier elements, which were produced by earlier generations of stars. Despite its brightness the Arches Cluster cannot be seen with the naked eye. The visible light from the cluster is completely obscured by gigantic clouds of dust in this region. To make the cluster visible astronomers have to use detectors which can collect light from the X-ray, infrared, and radio bands, as these wavelengths can pass through the dust clouds. This observation shows the Arches Cluster in the infrared and demonstrates the leap in Hubble’s performance since its 1999 image of same object.

iss071e264174 (June 29, 2024) --- The Milky Way appears in the vastness of space behind the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft docked to the Harmony module's space-facing port on the International Space Station. NASA astronaut and Expedition 71 Flight Engineer Matt Dominick can be seen peering out of the left window on Dragon while soaring 254 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

This image zooms into a small portion of NASA Kepler full field of view -- an expansive, 100-square-degree patch of sky in our Milky Way galaxy. At the center of the field is a star with a known "hot Jupiter" planet, named "TrES-2," zipping closely around it every 2.5 days. Kepler will observe TrES-2 and other known planets as a test to demonstrate that it is working properly, and to obtain new information about those planets. The area pictured is one-thousandth of Kepler's full field of view, and shows hundreds of stars at the very edge of the constellation Cygnus. The image has been color-coded so that brighter stars appear white, and fainter stars, red. It is a 60-second exposure, taken on April 8, 2009, one day after the spacecraft's dust cover was jettisoned. Kepler was designed to hunt for planets like Earth. The mission will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at the same stars, looking for periodic dips in brightness. Such dips occur when planets cross in front of their stars from our point of view in the galaxy, partially blocking the starlight. To achieve the level of precision needed to spot planets as small as Earth, Kepler's images are intentionally blurred slightly. This minimizes the number of saturated stars. Saturation, or "blooming," occurs when the brightest stars overload the individual pixels in the detectors, causing the signal to spill out into nearby pixels. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11985

This image zooms into a small portion of NASA Kepler full field of view, an expansive, 100-square-degree patch of sky in our Milky Way galaxy. An eight-billion-year-old cluster of stars 13,000 light-years from Earth, called NGC 6791, can be seen in the image. Clusters are families of stars that form together out of the same gas cloud. This particular cluster is called an open cluster, because the stars are loosely bound and have started to spread out from each other. The area pictured is 0.2 percent of Kepler's full field of view, and shows hundreds of stars in the constellation Lyra. The image has been color-coded so that brighter stars appear white, and fainter stars, red. It is a 60-second exposure, taken on April 8, 2009, one day after the spacecraft's dust cover was jettisoned. Kepler was designed to hunt for planets like Earth. The mission will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at the same stars, looking for periodic dips in brightness. Such dips occur when planets cross in front of their stars from our point of view in the galaxy, partially blocking the starlight. To achieve the level of precision needed to spot planets as small as Earth, Kepler's images are intentionally blurred slightly. This minimizes the number of saturated stars. Saturation, or "blooming," occurs when the brightest stars overload the individual pixels in the detectors, causing the signal to spill out into nearby pixels. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11986

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered surprising new clues about a hefty, rapidly aging star whose behavior has never been seen before in our Milky Way galaxy. In fact, the star is so weird that astronomers have nicknamed it “Nasty 1,” a play on its catalog name of NaSt1. The star may represent a brief transitory stage in the evolution of extremely massive stars. First discovered several decades ago, Nasty 1 was identified as a Wolf-Rayet star, a rapidly evolving star that is much more massive than our sun. The star loses its hydrogen-filled outer layers quickly, exposing its super-hot and extremely bright helium-burning core. But Nasty 1 doesn’t look like a typical Wolf-Rayet star. The astronomers using Hubble had expected to see twin lobes of gas flowing from opposite sides of the star, perhaps similar to those emanating from the massive star Eta Carinae, which is a Wolf-Rayet candidate. Instead, Hubble revealed a pancake-shaped disk of gas encircling the star. The vast disk is nearly 2 trillion miles wide, and may have formed from an unseen companion star that snacked on the outer envelope of the newly formed Wolf-Rayet. Based on current estimates, the nebula surrounding the stars is just a few thousand years old, and as close as 3,000 light-years from Earth. Credits: NASA/Hubble

iss073e0982696 (Oct. 25, 2025) --- A reddish airglow blankets Earth beneath a star-filled sky illuminated by the Milky Way. The planet’s surface is sparsely dotted with city lights along the desert coast of the Middle East by the Arabian Sea. The International Space Station was orbiting 258 miles above Earth at approximately 11:34 p.m. local time when this photograph was taken.

NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO) was launched July 22, 1999 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, STS-93 mission. This image was produced by combining a dozen CXO observations made of a 130 light-year region in the center of the Milky Way over the last 5 years. The colors represent low (red), medium (green) and high (blue) energy x-rays. Thanks to Chandra's unique resolving power, astronomers have now been able to identify thousands of point-like x-ray sources due to neutron stars, black holes, white dwarfs, foreground stars, and background galaxies. What remains is a diffuse x-ray glow extending from the upper left to the lower right, along the direction of the disk of the galaxy. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama manages the Chandra program. (NASA/CXC/UCLA/M. Muno et al.)

This image shows the Milky Way as seen from the solar system. The shaded regions are those scanned by the Skylab experiment Galactic X-Ray Mapping (S150). The galactic center is approximately at the center of the map. The three overlapping rectangles illustrate the fields of view of the three collimators in one instant of time. The Marshall Space Flight Center had program responsibility for the development of Skylab hardware and experiments.

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO) has made a sturning, high-energy panorama of the central regions of our Milky Way galaxy. The findings are an important step toward understanding the most active area of the Milky Way as well as other galaxies throughout the universe. This 400 by 900-light-year mosaic of several CXO images reveals hundreds of white dwarf stars, neutron stars, and black holes bathed in an incandescent fog of miltimillion-degree gas. The diffuse x-ray emission seems to be related to the turmoil and density of matter in the inner Milky Way. Stars are forming there at a much more rapid rate than in the galactic "suburbs." Many of the most massive stars in the galaxy are located in the galactic center and are furiously boiling off their outer layers in searing stellar winds. Supernova explosions are far more common in the region and send shock waves booming through the inner galaxy. The super massive black hole at the center of the galaxy is located inside the bright white patch in the center of the image. The colors indicate x-ray energy bands-red (low), green (medial), and blue (high). A supernova occurs when a massive star has used up its nuclear fuel and the pressure drops in the central core of the star. The matter in the core is crushed by gravity to higher and higher densities, and temperatures reach billions of degrees. Under these extreme conditions, nuclear reactions occur violently and catastrophically reversing the collapse. A thermonuclear shock wave races through the now expanding stellar debris, fusing lighter elements into heavier ones and producing a brilliant visual outburst. (Photo credit: NASA/UMass/D. Wang et al)

One of the most prolific birthing grounds in our Milky Way galaxy, a nebula called RCW 49, is exposed in superb detail for the first time in this new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Located 13,700 light-years away in the southern constellation Centaurus, RCW 49 is a dark and dusty stellar nursery that houses more than 2,200 stars. Because many of the stars in RCW 49 are deeply embedded in plumes of dust, they cannot be seen at visible wavelengths. When viewed with Spitzer's infrared eyes, however, RCW 49 becomes transparent. Like cracking open a quartz rock to discover its jewels inside, the nebula's newborn stars have been dramatically exposed. This image taken by Spitzer's infrared array camera highlights the nebula's older stars (blue stars in center pocket), its gas filaments (green) and dusty tendrils (pink). Speckled throughout the murky clouds are more than 300 never-before-seen newborn stars. Astronomers are interested in further studying these newfound proto-stars because they offer a fresh look at star formation in our own galaxy. This image was taken on Dec. 23, 2003, and is composed of photographs obtained at four wavelengths: 3.6 microns (blue), 4.5 microns (green), 5.8 microns (orange) and 8 microns (red). http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA05989

NASA Galaxy Evolution Explorer Mission celebrates its sixth anniversary studying galaxies beyond our Milky Way through its sensitive ultraviolet telescope, the only such far-ultraviolet detector in space. The mission studies the shape, brightness, size and distance of distant galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic history, giving scientists a wealth of data to help us better understand the origins of the universe. One such object is pictured here, the galaxy NGC598, more commonly known as M33. The image shows a map of the recent star formation history of M33. The bright blue and white areas are where star formation has been extremely active over the past few million years. The patches of yellow and gold are regions where star formation was more active 100 million years ago. In addition, the ultraviolet image shows the most massive young stars in M33. These stars burn their large supply of hydrogen fuel quickly, burning hot and bright while emitting most of their energy at ultraviolet wavelengths. Compared with low-mass stars like our sun, which live for billions of years, these massive stars never reach old age, having a lifespan as short as a few million years. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12000

iss073e0516005 (Aug. 23, 2025) --- The Milky Way appears above Earth's bright atmospheric glow in this photograph from the International Space Station as it soared 261 miles above southern Iran at approximately 12:54 a.m. local time. The camera was configured for low light and long duration settings.

iss073e0982261 (Oct. 24, 2025) --- The Milky Way spans the night sky above a yellow-green airglow that blankets the Atlantic Ocean, midway between South America and Africa. This long-exposure photograph was taken from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above Earth at approximately 11:19 p.m. local time.

iss073e0982823 (Oct. 26, 2025) --- The Moon glares into a camera aboard the International Space Station as it orbited 259 miles above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa at approximately 10:49 p.m. local time. A bright airglow blankets Earth's horizon as the Milky Way illuminates the night sky.

iss073e0982679 (Oct. 25, 2025) --- The Milky Way spans the night sky above a bright orange-yellow airglow that blankets the city lights along the east coast of Africa, from Kenya to Somalia. The International Space Station was orbiting 259 miles above the Indian Ocean, north of Madagascar, at approximately 10:29 p.m. local time when this photograph was taken.

NASA Galaxy Evolution Explorer Mission celebrates its sixth anniversary studying galaxies beyond our Milky Way through its sensitive ultraviolet telescope, the only such far-ultraviolet detector in space. Pictured here, the galaxy NGC598 known as M33. The mission studies the shape, brightness, size and distance of distant galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic history, giving scientists a wealth of data to help us better understand the origins of the universe. One such object is pictured here, the galaxy NGC598, more commonly known as M33. This image is a blend of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's M33 image and another taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. M33, one of our closest galactic neighbors, is about 2.9 million light-years away in the constellation Triangulum, part of what's known as our Local Group of galaxies. Together, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and Spitzer can see a broad spectrum of sky. Spitzer, for example, can detect mid-infrared radiation from dust that has absorbed young stars' ultraviolet light. That's something the Galaxy Evolution Explorer cannot see. This combined image shows in amazing detail the beautiful and complicated interlacing of the heated dust and young stars. In some regions of M33, dust gathers where there is very little far-ultraviolet light, suggesting that the young stars are obscured or that stars farther away are heating the dust. In some of the outer regions of the galaxy, just the opposite is true: There are plenty of young stars and very little dust. Far-ultraviolet light from young stars glimmers blue, near-ultraviolet light from intermediate age stars glows green, and dust rich in organic molecules burns red. This image is a 3-band composite including far infrared as red. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11998

This image shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4631 as seen edge-on from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The Chandra data, shown in blue and purple, provide the first unambiguous evidence for a halo of hot gas surrounding a galaxy that is very similar to our Milky Way. The structure across the middle of the image and the extended faint filaments, shown in orange, represent the observation from the HST that reveals giant bursting bubbles created by clusters of massive stars. Scientists have debated for more than 40 years whether the Milky Way has an extended corona, or halo, of hot gas. Observations of NGC 4631 and similar galaxies provide astronomers with an important tool in the understanding our own galactic environment. A team of astronomers, led by Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, observed NGC 4631 with CXO's Advanced Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). The observation took place on April 15, 2000, and its duration was approximately 60,000 seconds.

S66-45328 (19 July 1966) --- Ultraviolet spectra of stars in the Carina-Vela region of the southern Milky Way. These objective-grating spectra were obtained by astronauts John W. Young and Michael Collins during Gemini-10 stand-up EVA on July 19, 1966, with a 70mm Maurer camera and its f/3.3 focal length lens. The spectra extends from 2,200 angstroms to about 4,000 angstroms. The spacecraft was docked to the horizon-stabilized Agena-10; thus giving an apparent field of rotation resulting from the four-degree-per-minute orbital motion during the 20-second exposure time. Photo credit: NASA

The tip of the wing of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy is dazzling in this new view from NASA Great Observatories. The SMC, is a small galaxy about 200,000 light-years way that orbits our own Milky Way spiral galaxy.

NASA Spitzer Space Telescope sees RCW 79 in the southern Milky Way, 17,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus.

The large bubble is an embryonic star that looks set to turn into one of the brightest stars in our Milky Way galaxy in this infrared image from the Herschel Space Telescope.