Incredible space photos

Discovered by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

Slight color differences on Saturn's moon Mimas are apparent in this false-color view of Herschel Crater captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its closest-ever flyby of that moon.The natural color of Mimas visible to the human eye may be a uniform gray or yellow color, but this mosaic has been contrast-enhanced and shows differences at other wavelengths of light.

During this flyby on Feb. 13, 2010, these images were obtained with Cassini's narrow-angle camera on that day at a distance of approximately 10,000 miles from Mimas.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, took this colorful image of the reflection nebula IRAS 12116-6001. This cloud of interstellar dust cannot be seen directly in visible light, but NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer detectors look at the nebula at infrared wavelengths, which bring out these incredible colors.

What is a nebula you ask?

A nebula is a cloud of dust particles and gases in space. The term nebula comes from the Latin word for cloud.

Above is an incredible photo of the Andromeda Galaxy, which is called M31. This amazing photo was created merging 330 individual images taken by the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope aboard NASA's Swift spacecraft. It is taken in ultraviolet and is of the highest resolution.

What do we know about the Andromeda Galaxy?

It is more than 220,000 light-years across which is more than twice as big as the Milky Way.

It is 2.5 million light-years away from Earth.

Can you see this galaxy with the naked eye? May on a very clear, very dark night away from the light sources on our planet it is barely visible as a misty patch to the your eye.

Fast-growing sunspot 1112 is crackling with solar flares.

This photo was taken on Oct. 7, 2010, when NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), observed its first lunar transit when the new moon passed directly between the spacecraft and the sun which created a partial eclipse of the sun. This photo shows the solar flares in great detail.

The Antennae galaxies are shown in this composite image from NASA's Great Observatories--the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold and brown), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red).

The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like "arms," seen in wide-angle views of the system. This group of galaxies is over 62 million light years from Earth, it is so amazing that we can see these galaxies.

This photo was taken in 1995. It is a photo of the Central star of the Hourglass Nebula, which is fading into a white dwarf star. You can see in this photo, delicate rings of colorful glowing gas (nitrogen-red, hydrogen-green, and oxygen-blue) outline the tenuous walls of the hourglass shape. The nuclear fuel is exhausted as the outer layers are ejected and the core becomes a cooling, and fading white dwarf. The universe is always changing before our very eyes, even when our eyes look through an incredible scope like the Hubble that astronomers use to create this image. It almost looks like an eye in the middle of it, doesn't it?

This incredible image captured by NASA's Ed Schilling is amazing as it was only visible for 15 seconds, as the The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa spacecraft streaked across the sky like a saber of light through the clouds as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere over the Woomera Test Range in Australia.

This photo they call the "M51 Hubble Remix".

M51, catologed 51st is a spiral nebula, which is a large galaxy with a well defined spiral structure and is also cataloged as NGC 5194.

In this photo, M51's spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy, NGC 5195.

Taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, these two are about 31 million light-years distant. Not far on the sky from the handle of the Big Dipper, they officially lie within the boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici.