Ian J. O’Neill 💾

ALT This square astronomical image is divided horizontally by the edge of a white and orange cloud on the bottom half. Within this region is a section of cloud shaped like a horse’s head. The top half of the image contains a faint purple haze that fades away to reveal the blackness of space near the top of the image, which is speckled with stars.

ALT A spiral galaxy is visible at the centre of the image. The galaxy is made up of spiral arms that wrap around a white central region. The arms are dusty and sprinkled with purple, pink, and white smudges. The background of space is filled with stars and points of light. A few of the stars are larger than the rest and have diffraction spikes.

ALT This square astronomical image is speckled with hundreds of thousands of stars visible across the black expanse of space. The stars vary in size and color, including blue, white, yellow, and red. More stars are located at the center of the image, where they are bound together by gravity into a spherical collection also called a globular cluster. Some of the stars have diffraction spikes.

ALT The image shows thousands of galaxies across the black expanse of space. The closest thousand or so galaxies appear as small disks of spiraling material, surrounded by halos of yellow and white light. The background is scattered with a hundred thousand more distant galaxies of different shapes, ranging in color from white to yellow to red. Most galaxies are so far away they appear as single points of light.