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Astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to assemble a comprehensive picture of the evolving universe.
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On a black background is a smattering of light sources like confetti on the floor after a party. Some appear as small dots in the background in blue, white, yellow, and red. Some are larger with spiral structures or are ovals and circles. A few large white spots have orange halos, and appear larger than the rest. There’s one bright white spot with spikes of light, which is a relatively nearby star on this sea of distant galaxies.
Hubble Ultra Deep Field
NASA's Swift viewed our neighboring galaxy Andromeda in ultraviolet light.
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A patchy cool-blue ring of light surrounds the bright center of the M31 galaxy. The image is dotted with purple, blue and white stars.
Swift's UV Portrait of the Andromeda Galaxy
NASA's Spitzer satellite reveals infrared light from the star-forming nebula W51 in this image.
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The nebula appears in shades of green, red, and yellow on a black starry background. The green swirls across the entire image with a large knot of red just to the right of center. Embedded in the green swirls are a few bright white and deep red spots that look like bubbles within the green clouds.
Star Factory W51
Explore this infographic to learn more about SuperTIGER, cosmic rays, and scientific ballooning.
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This infographic shows many factoids about the SuperTIGER balloon mission. The poster has the header: “SuperTIGER Catching heavy cosmic rays.” There is a cut-out line drawing of the SuperTIGER payload as if it was dangling from a balloon. Near this is the text, “SuperTIGER is a souped-up version of the Trans-Iron Galactice Element Recorder (TIGER) detector that flew in 1997, 2001, and 2003.” next to that are a series of representations of cosmic rays from an electron (1% of cosmic rays), hydrogen (90%), helium (8%), and heavier nuclei (1%). Next to that is a periodic table of the elements with the elements from neon (atomic #10) to barium (atomic #56) highlighted. This is accompanied by the text, “Cosmic rays are particles from far outside the solar system traveling at up to nearly the speed of light. SuperTIGER seeks heavy atomic nuclei ranging from neon to barium.” Just below the cosmic ray particles and periodic table is a silhouette of a van accompanying the text, “SuperTIGER and its supporting hardware weighs 6,000 pounds (2,700 kilograms), comparable to a full-size van.” A drawing of Antarctica with arrows encircling the continent in a counterclockwise direction is accompanied by the text, “SuperTIGER launches from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and can float for weeks. Circular winds aloft confine it to the continent.” Just below these items there is a depiction of the balloon at launch, taking up about two-thirds the height of the poster. The line drawing of the balloon at launch includes the inflated portion of the balloon, which is just a small upside down tear-drop at the top, the recovery parachute, and the SuperTIGER payload. With this is the text, “Balloon at launch, 856 feet (261 meters) tall.” The balloon stands next to a line drawing of the Washington Monument, which stands 555 feet (169 meters) tall. Next to this is a depiction of the balloon in flight, with the balloon fully inflated from the top down to the recovery parachute. The text says: “Balloon at altitude, 460 feet (140 meters) across.” Next to the payload drawing is the text, “SuperTIGER reaches a maximum height of about 127,000 feet (39,000 meters).” Near this is a drawing of a commercial jet and the text, “That’s nearly four times the typical cruising altitude of commercial airliners and above 99.5 percent of the atmosphere.”
SuperTIGER Infographic
Cygnus X-1 Presents: It’s Dinner Time and You’re The Meal!
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A black hole with a disc of material surrounding it consumes and stretches the words of the title above it.
Devoured by Gravity – "Galaxy of Horrors" poster (English)
This festive portrait of our Milky Way galaxy comes from ESA's Planck mission.
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This oval image represents a view of the entire sky unfolded and laid out flat. Running horizontally across the middle of the oval is a bright line of white, which is light emitted by gas and dust in the plane of the Milky Way. Mottled red fills the oval with a few areas of yellow, especially along the plane of the Milky Way and extending above and below it. Over all of this, in the center, is a thick ring of blue.
A Milky Way 'Mixer' Amongst the Stars
This image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) features comet 65/P Gunn.
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Comet 65/P Gunn looks like a match with a flame against a starry background. A thin stripe of red runs from the left side of the image almost to the middle where a bright red and yellow ball flares up with a tail tapering off to the right.
WISE Catches Comet 65-P Gunn
AU Microscopii is one of the youngest planetary systems ever observed, and its star throws vicious temper tantrums!
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Giant flares from a giant, bright young star in oranges, reds and bright yellow burst from the star, affecting a nearby planet. You can see the planet’s atmosphere being blasted away by the energy.
Flares of Fury – "Galaxy of Horrors" poster (English)
This map shows the oldest light in our universe, as detected by ESA's Planck mission.
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This image shows an oval that represents the whole sky if you folded it out onto a flat piece of paper. The oval is dotted with many regions ranging from blue, green, yellow and red in color. While the image looks chaotic, the blue regions are nearly always surrounded by green. The yellow are embedded in the green, and red embedded in the yellow. These show temperature differences in the early universe, which ultimately lead us to see where matter clumped together to form the structures we see today.
Best Map Ever of the Universe
No spaceship will shield you from the blinding destruction of the gamma ray ghouls!
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Two astronauts are standing on an asteroid, watching a pair of neutron stars, or the cores of collapsed stars, collide in the distance. The result of the collision is bright, concentrated beams of light called gamma rays. The gamma ray bursts narrowly miss the astronauts as they shoot outward from the collision.
Gamma Ray Ghouls – "Galaxy of Horrors" poster (English)
This far-off blue planet may look like a friendly haven – but don’t be deceived! Weather here is deadly.
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A poster done in the style of a vintage poster for a horror movie. Reading "Rains of Terror," it's death by a million cuts on this slasher planet. Jagged edges of glass can be seen battering a spacecraft on this alien world.
Rains of Terror – "Galaxy of Horrors" poster (English)
This image shows the entire gamma-ray sky using 12 years of data from NASA's Fermi.
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This image shows the sky as you would see it in gamma-ray light. It is an oval, which represents the sky folded out onto a flat surface. The oval is primarily blue, showing a background of gamma-rays that permeates the entire sky. A bright band in shades of yellow, orange, and red goes across the center of the image from left to right, which shows gamma rays from the plane of the Milky Way. There are dots of yellow and red throughout the rest of the image, indicating distant galaxies that emit gamma rays.
Fermi's 12-year View of the Gamma-ray Sky
This image from NASA's Spitzer shows the Cat's Paw Nebula.
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This image shows a starry background bathed in green clouds. At the center is a bright region of yellow and red clouds with two smaller circles of red, taken together these red regions resemble a cat’s footprint.
Cat's Paw Nebula
¡Esta fuerza escalofriante te dejará temblando de terror!
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Este póster muestra un murciélago verde siniestro que emerge del cosmos, empujando objetos como galaxias y estrellas hacia el vacío del espacio exterior.
Energía oscura – "Galaxy of Horrors" póster (En Español)
This composite image of the nebula RCW 120 was captured by NASA's Spitzer and SOFIA missions.
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A faint ring of gray clouds breaks at the top, looking like horns extending upward. Inside the left side and lower part of the gray ring is a thick blue cloud. A ribbon of red overlaps part of the blue cloud on the left side, but also extends just outside the gray clouds. All of this is on a black background dotted with star light.
RCW 120
The history of the universe is outlined in this illustration. 
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This infographic is done in shades of blue and white. At the top left is the title: “History of the Universe.” Below that is a cone with graphics representing different stages of cosmic history within eight evenly spaced ovals. Below the cone is text connected to each oval indicating time since the beginning of the universe, the name of the cosmic era, and a brief description. The first oval on the left is filled with blobs, and the associated text reads: 10 to the negative 32 seconds, Inflation, and Initial expansion. Moving right, the next oval is filled with light (represented as squiggles), protons, and neutrons. The text below reads: one microsecond; first particles; and neutrons, protons, and electrons form. The next oval is filled with light (squiggles) and atomic nuclei. The text below reads: three minutes; first nuclei; and helium and hydrogen form. The next oval is filled with light (squiggles) and atoms. The text below reads: 380,000 years; first light; and the first atoms form. The next oval is filled with transparent areas of blue representing gas with a few dots representing stars. The text below reads: 200 million years; first stars; and gas and dust condense into stars. The next oval is filled with tightly packed galaxies with some transparent areas representing gas. The text below reads: 400 million years; galaxies and dark matter; and galaxies form in dark matter cradles. The next oval is filled with galaxies that have moved apart with stars in between. The text below reads: 10 billion years; dark energy; and expansion accelerates. The last oval is filled with galaxies that have moved far apart with stars in between. The text below reads: 13.8 billion years; today; and humans observe the universe.
History of the Universe
Composite image of the Swan Nebula with data from NASA's SOFIA, Herschel Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope.
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Against a starry background sits a nebula that resembles the neck and head of a swan who is looking to the left. The cloudy nebula is a dark red on the edges that would be the right side of the swan’s neck and top of its head. This fades into a pale yellow on the left side of the swan’s neck and the bottom of the head and beak. Inside the crook of the neck there is a semi-transparent blue cloud. All of this is on a black, starry background.
Swan Nebula
These doomed worlds were among the first and creepiest to be discovered as they orbit an undead star known as a pulsar.
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A poster done in the style of movie posters from the 1950s and 1960s showing the zombie worlds with a colorful nebula and a planet being blasted by twin beams of radiation by the pulsar host star. The overall image creates the look of a scary skull.
Zombie Worlds – "Galaxy of Horrors" poster (English)
This image of the whole sky shows 22 months of data recorded by NASA's NICER mission aboard the International Space Station.
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On a black background are a network of orange filaments connecting a number of bright spots. The bright spots indicate places where the filaments cross, and are sources in the sky where NICER often points its telescope. The swirling loops between those points reveal the path NICER’s telescope takes between these sources.
NICER's Night Moves Trace the X-ray Sky
In this mosaic stretching 340 light-years across, NASA's Webb’s showcases the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region.
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Swirling reds, whites, and light yellows mix around in front of a starry sky.
Webb Catches A Cosmic Tarantula
Algo extraño y misterioso se arrastra por el cosmos. Los científicos lo llaman materia oscura.
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Una red luminosa es visible en el cielo nocturno más allá del límite de un bosque. Dispersa entre los nodos de la red está la oscuridad, que denota la presencia de materia oscura. En el centro de la telaraña, la oscuridad se funde para crear la forma de una araña.
Materia Oscura – "Galaxy of Horrors" póster (En Español)
The "Hand of God," a pulsar wind nebula, is imaged here by NASA's Chandra and NuSTAR missions.
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A supernova remnant rises like an ethereal hand up the center of the image. The “wrist” appears in bright white while the finger-like structures are formed from a tangle of yellow strands of emission. This hand-shaped nebula intersects a spotty red oval with dots of light.
X-ray View of 'Hand of God'
¡Ninguna nave espacial te protegerá de la cegadora destrucción de los demonios de rayos gamma!
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Dos astronautas están sobre un asteroide, mirando un par de estrellas de neutrones, o los núcleos de estrellas colapsadas, chocar en la distancia. El resultado de la colisión son haces de luz brillantes y concentrados llamados rayos gamma. Los estallidos de rayos gamma evitan por poco impactar a los astronautas al ser emitidos desde la colisión.
Demonios de Rayos Gamma – "Galaxy of Horrors" póster (En Español)
NASA's Chandra detected the X-rays from Uranus.
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Uranus is depicted in blues and pinks, encircled by a near vertical white ring. The blue and white colors represent optical data obtained by the Keck-1 Telescope, and the pink represents X-ray data gathered by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The blues, which appear as blended, near vertical stripes, range from midnight blue at our right, to teal and even neon sky blue at our left. Across the right half of the planet is a teardrop-shaped patch of neon pink. Several pale blue dots mark the surface of the planet, though none appear in the hot pink patch. The near vertical ring, which is slightly tipped toward our upper-right, is quite thin. It appears white when set against the black background, and pink when it passes in front of the planet's pink patch.
Chandra Studies Uranus in X-rays
NASA's (PIPER) studies patterns of light in the universe’s baby picture, as shown in this infographic.
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This infographic shows many factoids about the PIPER (Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer) balloon mission. At the top, there is part of an image of the cosmic microwave background with the text, “The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is heat left over from the big bang and is the oldest light we can see in the universe.” Just below that, near a circular, bright “explosion” is the text, “Scientists are studying the CMB for proof that the universe expanded rapidly immediately after the big bang.” Next is an image of two circles of yellow lines that look like 8-pointed pinwheels that would swirls in opposite directions with text, “This process, called inflation, should have created gravitational waves. If so, light from the CMB should contain a distinct twisting polarization pattern called B-mode.” There is a cut-out line drawing of the PIPER payload with the silhouette of a person standing next to it, showing that it is about two persons’ high. The text says, “PIPER is a microwave telescope flown on a high-altitude balloon. The instrument has twin telescopes in a hot-tub-sized container of liquid helium.” Next there is text with icicles below it that reads, “Liquid helium keeps the instrument at -452 degrees Fahrenheit (-269 Celsius).” Near a map of the United States with a telescope by Maryland and a lightbulb near California is the text, “The detectors on PIPER could spot a 60-watt incandescent light bulb in California from PIPER's base of operations at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.” A silhouette of a hippopotamus accompanies the text, “PIPER's total weight, including instrument, balloon and ballast, is about 8,000 pounds (3,600 kilograms), as much as a full-grown male hippopotamus.” An illustration of the fully inflated balloon appears with the text, “Width of fully inflated balloon: 430 feet (130 meters).” Underneath the balloon are three houses. The text nearby explains, “The balloon expands to approximately 40 million cubic feet (1.1 million cubic meters) when it reaches maximum altitude. It's made from polyethylene film comparable in thickness to ordinary plastic sandwich wrap.” A drawing of Australia, Texas and New Mexico is accompanied by the text, “Flights are planned from Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, Palestine, Texas and Alice Springs, Australia. Overnight flights from these three locations will allow PIPER to cover 85 percent of the sky.” And finally, a commercial airplane near the bottom has text, “PIPER's maximum altitude is about 120,000 feet (36,000 meters). That's more than three times the cruising altitude of a commercial airplane.”
PIPER Infographic

Explore the Universe

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