Gallery: The Most Stunning Space Photos of 2016
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/westerlund-2.html">NASA</a>01BSP-054.jpg
To celebrate American Archive Month in October, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has released a collection of images, including this shot of a cluster of stars 20,000 light years from Earth. The blue and green shows cosmic haze where clouds form; x-rays are shown in purple.
<a href="http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161116.html">David Lindemann</a>02SPoW-001.jpg
These bright emission nebulas, located in Cassiopeia, are named Heart and Soul.
<a href="http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/05/A_golden_veil_cloaks_a_newborn_star">ESA/Hubble & NASA</a>03BSP-061.jpg
This young star is breaking out. Like a hatchling pecking through its shell, this particular stellar newborn is forcing its way out into the surrounding universe. The golden veil of light cloaks a young stellar object known only as IRAS 14568-6304. It is ejecting gas at supersonic speeds and eventually will have cleared a hole in the cloud, allowing it to be easily visible to the outside universe.
<a href="http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1625a/"> ESO/H. Drass et al.</a>04BSP-057.jpg
This spectacular image of the Orion Nebula star-formation region was obtained from multiple exposures using the HAWK-I infrared camera on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. This is the deepest view ever of this region and reveals more very faint planetary-mass objects than expected.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/maven-celebrates-one-mars-year-of-science">NASA</a>05SPoW16-017.jpg
This image of Mars has been altered to show what we would see with ultraviolet vision: the Valles Marineris appears as a blue cut across the middle, and an ozone build-up at the south pole shows as magenta.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-looks-into-a-cosmic-kaleidoscope">NASA</a>06SPoW16-011.jpg
At first glance, this cosmic kaleidoscope of purple, blue and pink offers a strikingly beautiful — and serene — snapshot of the cosmos. However, this multi-colored haze actually marks the site of two colliding galaxy clusters, forming a single object known as MACS J0416.1-2403.
<a href="https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1616a/">ESO</a>07BSP-056.jpg
In this image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), light from blazing blue stars energizes the gas left over from the stars’ recent formation. The result is a strikingly colorful emission nebula, called LHA 120-N55, in which the stars are adorned with a mantle of glowing gas. Astronomers study these beautiful displays to learn about the conditions in places where new stars develop.
<a href="http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1635a/">ESO</a>08BSP-058.jpg
This is a richly detailed view of the star formation region Messier 78 in the Orion constellation. The blue region is reflected light from hot young stars, and streams of dark dust and red jets emerge from forming stars.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia20505/in-daylight-on-the-night-side">NASA-JPL-Caltech</a>09SPoW16-019.jpg
This image shows the rings of Saturn from above, with the darkened planet on the lower right. Even at night, the part of the rings not shadowed by Saturn remain in sunlight.
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NASA’s Hubble telescope took this photo of a star dying by discarding its outer layers of gas, leaving a white dwarf (the white spot in the middle) at its core.
NASA, ESA, P Crowther (University of Sheffield)11BSP-046.jpg
Astronomers using the unique ultraviolet capabilities of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have identified nine monster stars with masses over 100 times the mass of the Sun in the star cluster R136. This makes it the largest sample of very massive stars identified to date. The results, which will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, raise many new questions about the formation of massive stars.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/abell-665.html">NASA</a>12SPoW16-018.jpg
Like cold fronts on Earth, merging galaxy clusters generate shock waves, shown in the white wave at the center of this image.
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubbles-best-image-of-alpha-centauri-a-and-b">NASA</a>13SPOW16-016.gif
This image shows Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, two stars in the star system closest to Earth, only 4.3 light-years away. Because of their proximity, the two stars are top targets in the search for habitable exoplanets.
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This supernova exploded long ago, but the heart of the dead neutron star still beats, issuing pulses of energy 6,500 light-years from Earth.
