Oh Wow!!!

God’s art

Inverted S-shaped NGC 6164-5 © NOIRLab

Butterfly nebula

The star or stars at its center are responsible for the nebula's appearance. In their death throes, they have cast off layers of gas periodically over the past couple thousand years. The "wings" of NGC 6302 are regions of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit that are tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour.

NGC 6302 lies between 2,500 and 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.

Credit: NASA, ESA, Joel Kastner (RIT)

Cosmic Fireworks by Hubble Space Telescope / ESA

Some of my favourite star clusters!

Veil Nebula Detail by Hubble Heritage

Perseid Meteors, Milky Way, and Stonehenge

Cosmic treasure chest by European Space Agency

Cosmic Jellyfish: Interacting Galaxies UGC 9326/7 ©

Before you ask, yes, we see that face-shaped cloud made of dust and gas (with stars for eyes) on the right side of this image as well.  

But the Tarantula Nebula is a far wilder place than weird red blobs. It is a large star-forming region of ionized hydrogen gas that lies 161,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Its turbulent clouds of gas and dust can be seen swirling between the region’s luminous, newly formed stars.

Also known as 30 Doradus, it is the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighborhood and home to the hottest, most massive stars known. This makes it an excellent natural laboratory to test theories of star formation and evolution. 

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray, E. Sabbi; Y.-H. Chu.

NGC 7714, When Two Galaxies Collide