40 Awe-Inspiring Space Photos That Are Bringing Us Back Down To Earth

It must take a very particular type of personality to cope with an experience like this. While floating above the Earth without being tethered to anything was probably exhilarating beyond comprehension, it must also have been absolutely terrifying. Most of us will never know the feeling, but Bruce McCandless II certainly did. This is him in that photo, showing him “free-flying” 320 feet away from his spacecraft using a jetpack on his back. The consequences of a mistake occurring must have been on his mind, but he pushed through them!

This trippy, computer-simulated image shows us a giant black hole in the middle of a jam-packed galaxy. The black hole it depicts is said to weigh the same amount as 17 billion Suns, which is difficult to wrap your head around. Black holes that are this supermassive aren’t usually found in parts of space as crowded as this place, meaning its discovery was a real surprise for experts.

This intense image was captured by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope, which is aboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. Launched in 1995, this spacecraft is the culmination of a joint effort by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to study the Sun. The mission captured this picture in ’99, showing us something called a handle-shaped prominence jutting out of the Sun. According to NASA, these are giant clouds of cool plasma suspended in the Sun’s outermost layer, which can sometimes erupt and burst out of the Sun's atmosphere.

Before you get carried away with this one, we’ll be clear: yes, this is Mars. But no, those things aren’t trees. We still haven’t found life on the red planet — not yet, anyway! So, what are those objects jutting out of the surface? Well, it turns out they’re little more than dark streaks of sand trailing down the dunes. That’s not quite as cool as if trees were growing there, admittedly, but they still make for an interesting sight.

It’s been claimed that this picture is among the “largest and most detailed celestial images ever made.” It was created using numerous photos taken by Hubble, and it shows us the Helix Nebula. The nebula is so striking to look at that it’s acquired some interesting nicknames over the years. Some people refer to it as the “Eye of God,” while others opt for the less flattering “Eye of Sauron.” Oddly, both of them feel pretty appropriate.

Here we see Saturn, the second-biggest of our Solar System’s planets. It has the most extensive ring system, as well as no fewer than 145 moons orbiting around it. It’s a special world in our back garden, and we can even see it from the ground with the naked eye. This image shows things from the opposite perspective: a view of Earth from Saturn. The distance between them is a little less than 900 million miles, which means it’s hardly a surprise that our entire world appears as little more than a blue dot.

Europa, one of Jupiter’s 95 moons, is just fascinating, as this peculiar image so plainly illustrates. But don’t be fooled by all those cracks and streaks you can see here on its surface; this moon is actually extremely smooth. The crevices there are generally shallow, while its hills tend to rise only to modest heights. Craters, meanwhile, are far from a common feature. Europa is a curious cosmic object, and the reasons why its surface appears the way it does aren’t fully understood yet.

Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, here we have a clear image of the “sombrero” galaxy, nicknamed, of course, after those distinctive Mexican hats. It’s fascinating to look at, with the European Space Agency describing it as “one of the universe’s most stately and photogenic galaxies.” We can’t see it with the naked eye from Earth, but it’s not especially difficult to find it with only modest equipment: a fairly small telescope should do the trick.

This image of the Veil Nebula was a vast improvement on all the others that came before it, as the detail it depicts is quite remarkable. The Veil Nebula is cloud of gas and dust about 2,100 light years away from our home planet, located in the Cygnus constellation. And while that’s obviously a far greater distance than the human mind can really conceptualize, in terms of astronomy it’s little more than a stone’s throw. The nebula is practically our neighbor!

This is an incredible — albeit slightly terrifying — image! It shows the astronaut Franklin R. Chang-Diaz in 2002 hard at work outside the International Space Station. He is attempting to install some important equipment. It was a vital job, but the picture shows us just how high the stakes were: if something had gone wrong, Chang-Diaz could all too easily have drifted away into space. Thankfully, he was fine and returned to Earth safely.

Without any context, you’d be forgiven for looking at this picture of the Hourglass Nebula and presuming it was actually some sort of ethereal alien. That “eye” seems to be staring right at us! For the more scientifically minded, though, this image has actually proven to be very useful. That’s because it shows us what happens when stellar matter is ejected during the final stages of a star’s lifecycle in a really clear way.

Take a look at this amazing image, which shows just how visible the impact of humans is on planet Earth — even from way up in space! The photograph was snapped at the International Space Station by the crew of Expedition 49, which, as the number neatly implies, was the 49th group to be sent up there. Their mission got going on September 6, 2016, and it ended more than a month later on October 30.

It’s amazing how varied different nebulae can appear in images. This one is the Bubble Nebula — it’s not exactly hard to discern where it took its name — which can be found roughly 8,000 light years away from our planet. At the heart of this nebula is a star, and it’s a big one. If you think our Sun is big, then it’ll be difficult to wrap your head around the fact that this star is 45 times more massive.

Here we see Atlantis, one of NASA’s Space Shuttles, passing by the Sun in May 2009. Though it may look like some kind of sci-fi movie still, this image was, incredibly, taken back on Earth — specifically in Florida. As for Atlantis, this craft played a pivotal role in servicing both the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope during its time. The Shuttle program is grounded nowadays, but Atlantis had a good run. It was flown for the first time in 1985, and the vessel flew regular missions until its retirement in the summer of 2011.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this photo in July 2009, which shows us a pretty incredible cosmic moment. This is NGC 6302, otherwise known as the Butterfly Nebula. The reason for the name is pretty self-explanatory! The “wingspan,” if we can call it that, of this butterfly stretches out over more than three light years, which is crazy to conceptualize. A nebula can be created when a star enters into the final phase of its lifecycle; this particular one is roughly 4,000 light years away from us. Wow.

Pillars of Creation was the poignant title given to this photo snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. It shows us a section of the Eagle Nebula, which is located in the Serpens constellation some 7,000 light years away from us. The “pillars” we see in the image are composed of cool hydrogen and dust; they’re believed to act as incubators for the formation of new stars. The photograph is widely considered to be one of the greatest ever taken by Hubble.

It was Galileo Galilei who first spotted this moon orbiting around Jupiter in 1610, deciding to give it the name of Io, a character found in Greek mythology. But it would be many more centuries before the average person would get a good view of it! In 1999 this photo from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft finally helped us do just that, showing us the beautiful weirdness of this natural satellite. The dark spot just to the left of the middle of the image shows an erupting volcano. With more than 400 active volcanoes like this, Io is the most geologically active object in the entire Solar System

Imagine the most intense hurricane on Earth possible, capable of cause immense damage. Now, imagine that storm covers a space equivalent in size to three Earths and that it lasts for hundreds of years. Right, well, that’s actually what’s going on over on Jupiter! We can actually see it happening, too. The Great Red Spot, as it’s known, is a region of high pressure on the planet that’s discernible in photos. It’s the Solar System’s biggest anticyclonic storm.

Is there a more epic selfie in the history of mankind? Really, it’s difficult to think of one that could possibly top this space selfie. It was taken by Stephen K. Robinson in 2005 while he was out and about in space during the STS-114 mission. This was an important operation, as it marked the first attempt to send a crewed Space Shuttle to space and back again in the wake of the Columbia disaster, which had occurred a little more than two years previously. Thankfully, everyone made it this time.

The Juno spacecraft captured this epic picture of Jupiter’s south pole. It was roughly 32,000 miles away from the surface of the planet at the time, though it got way closer on other occasions. If you look closely at this particular image, you’ll see a bunch of oval shapes on the planet’s surface: these are cyclones, some of which have a diameter of around 600 miles! It’s hard to pull your eyes away.

In a NASA handout accompanying this spectacular image of the Crab Nebula, the caption describes it as the “six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star’s supernova explosion.” That explosion happened almost a millennium ago, and the crazy thing is that people alive at that time noticed it. Star-gazers in Japan and China took note of what was happening, while it’s also possible that Native Americans noticed it, too. In any case, it’s only with the development of Hubble and other technologies like it that we can now get such a detailed look at the nebula today.

This photo is the total inverse of a common sight on Earth: the rising and setting of the Moon. When you’re actually on the Moon, though, your perspective is such that it’s the Earth that rises and falls above and below the horizon. It feels a little topsy-turvy to see that, as this image snapped aboard Apollo 17 in 1972 so plainly illustrates. Apollo 17, incidentally, was the last mission in the wider Apollo program, which began 11 years earlier.

The James Webb Space Telescope has been operational since July 2022, and its progress has already proven to be remarkable. In celebration of that fact, one year on NASA released this image to the world, which shows us the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. In a press release, this complex was described as “the closest star-forming region to Earth.” In other words, this is the type of place where stars like our very own Sun are created.

In astronomical terms, a “transit” refers to the moment when a small object moves past a bigger one. So, for example, when a planet passes a star. Here we see Venus against the backdrop of our Sun — and the difference in size is incredible! This is actually an extremely rare event, so we’re lucky to be able to see a photo of it happening. This image was snapped in 2012 when the last transit of Venus occurred: the next ones are due in 2117 and 2125.

This photo of Saturn’s C- and B-rings was snapped from Voyager 2 in August 1981 when the space probe was about 1.7 million miles away from the ringed planet. We can tell the difference between the two rings based on their respective colors: the C-ring is grayish and the B-ring is a bright yellow. That’s down to the varying compositions of each. All told, the entire ring system around Saturn is by far the most vast of any of the planets in our Solar System.

Snapped by John W. Young, here's astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr. wandering around the weird landscape of the Moon on April 21, 1972. As much fun and wonder as he’s surely experiencing in that moment, he’s not without his responsibilities. He’s in the middle of collecting some important samples of the Moon, just at the edge of a crater called Plum. Behind Duke we can see the Lunar Roving Vehicle.

This is another perspective of the 2012 transit of Venus. It shows us the course Venus took as it passed by the Sun, and again we can see just how dwarfed it is by the giant star at the center of our solar system. The transit of Venus is a funny phenomenon because it’s so rare — yet also really predictable. We know exactly when the next one will occur, but barely anyone alive when the last one happened can reasonably still expect to be around.

This image captures a remarkable phenomenon. We’re looking at the Sun here, which has just experienced a “coronal mass ejection.” Essentially, this is a large explosion of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s hot outer layer. This has led to the appearance of these strange, bright loops, which NASA tells us are “charged particles spinning along the magnetic field lines.” Though we’re not sure exactly what this means, we can say it makes for a pretty and intense sight!

In really simple terms, the term “sunspot” refers to a specific spot on the Sun where the magnetic field is especially strong — literally 2,500 or so times more intense than any location you’d find on Earth. It’s also way stronger than most other places on the Sun itself. Anyway, this one erupted back in 2012, and it was captured with a blue filter, which makes it feel all the more dramatic.

Here’s the Galileo space probe at the end of 1995 as it’s about to enter an intense new environment. It’s heading straight into the upper reaches of Jupiter’s atmosphere, which is a turbulent place, to put it mildly. In fact, it was always known that the Galileo space probe would be destroyed here. That day finally came in September 2003, many years after the probe’s mission first got under way. It went into the history books as the first craft to ever orbit one of our Solar System’s outer planets.

This sparkling image was taken by Hubble, and it shows us stars — hundreds of thousands of them! We’re looking at a globular cluster of stars known as M13, which can actually be seen with the naked eye from Earth, even though it’s around 25,000 light-years away. The stars are packed tightly together in this ball, which has a diamater of around 150 light-years; they will spend their whole lives circling around in this cluster. The more reddish stars in the image are entering into the final phase of their lifecycle and cooling down, while the bluer ones are the most intensely hot.

This is the Cat’s Eye Nebula, as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. This structure was one of the first planetary nebulae to be identified by astronomers; it also happens to be among the most intricate and complicated. We can understand it as a sort of visual record of what happens to stars when they’re dying. In other words, we can see that this star at the center of the nebula has been ejecting the outer layers of its gasses. Experts think that this happens in 1,500-year bursts in the case of the Cat’s Eye Nebula.

The Aurora Australis, like its counterpart to the north in the form of the Aurora Borealis, is a spectacular phenomenon to behold. In both cases, the night sky comes to life with vibrant greens, blues, reds, and purples. It’s an amazing thing to see from the ground, but just imagine seeing it from above the clouds, like the people on board the International Space Station sometimes can. As we see from this 2014 photo, it’s an astonishing sight.

For anyone with an interest in astronomy, February 24, 1987, was a significant day. That was when the light from a supernova — which is now designated SN 1987A — was first observed on Earth. This marked the first time modern experts could really analyze the phenomenon of a supernova in such thorough detail. Telescopes such as the Hubble and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory were all assigned to the task, but you could actually see it with the naked eye. That’s how bright it was!

Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the Moon, but the guy who stepped onto the lunar surface right after him gets a little less credit. Buzz Aldrin was literally only 20 or so minutes behind his colleague, and here he is hopping along with a bunch of complicated and bulky-looking equipment in his hands.

This picture comes to us from Hubble, showing us a section of cosmic cloud and a bunch of stars dotted around it. The smoky “cloud” here is composed of dust and gas, and it marks just a segment of the wider Lagoon Nebula. This formation can be found roughly 4,350 light years away from our home planet, over in the Sagittarius constellation.

Here’s a selfie taken by the Curiosity Mars rover. The notion of a vehicle taking a photo of itself as it tracks along the surface of an alien planet is charming, but the resulting images are actually really important. That’s because they allow engineers to take a look at the vehicle and to assess its condition. Beyond that, such images make for good publicity, too. People see those pictures and feel inspired to get involved with space.

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, otherwise known as NuSTAR, is a telescope that was initially intended to observe objects in space that are located tremendous distances away from Earth. But at some point along the way, experts realized it could actually be used to look at something far closer: our very own Sun. Given NuSTAR’s specifications, it’s actually capable of enduring the brightness of the Sun without being damaged. That has resulted in remarkable images like this one.

Below the International Space Station on March 23, 2020, was America’s southern neighbor Mexico. An astronaut expertly captured nearly the entirety of the country in this fantastic photograph. You can see its magnificent mountain ranges and rugged coastlines, plus the disparate climate zones like dense forests and coastal plains.

It almost looks like a colorful masquerade mask, but this photograph is showing us something far more consequential. What we’re looking at here is two galaxies on a course to collide with each other! Each body exerts a gravitational pull on its counterpart, creating new stars in the process. They’ll circle around one another over the course of millions of years, slowly edging closer and closer together. This dance will end when they eventually meet and merge into a single galaxy.