Star Pictures: NASA's Most Extraordinary Images EVER (PHOTOS, POLL)

These extraordinary images are literally out of this world.

Galaxies and supernovae, protostellar jets and pulsars: these pictures of stars from the depths of the cosmos are spectacular, mysterious, and inspiring.

Explore the stars of the universe through the eyes of NASA's Hubble Telescope in the images below.

Crab Nebula

A Hubble mosaic of the Crab Nebula, the remains of a "tremendous" stellar explosion. According to NASA, observers in China and Japan recorded the supernova nearly 1,000 years ago, in 1054.

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Comments

[Hayley babes]

Oh my, what truly beautiful pictures.

[JShankel]

Funny that there's no mention of these structures in any of the holy books that are supposedly "final and perfect." Funny how there is mention of stars and other things you can see with the naked eye. Funny.

[Saidas]

What is your point?

[SamKnause]

What spectacular images. These would look beautiful framed.

[naschkatze]

Stunning. Other than that, I'm speechless with awe.

[Rosewren]

The full gallery is here

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire

[Cycadeoidea]

The "light echo" illuminating dust around V838 Monocerotis is one of the most amazing photographs of the century.

[Liberal2]

There's time-lapse photography of the Crab Nebula available on the 'net, showing pressure waves moving through the dust.

[liberalNmoderation]

Ooooohohohoooo coooool!

[instagladiator]

I'll giv'em, a C+ for that series of photos. They're getting better.

[BlueZoo]

WOW! Just WOW! What else can you say? Spectacular cosmos we're a small part of!

[Ares1]

Things only get better when the James Webb space telescope goes into orbit in 2014.

[instagladiator]

Wonder if it will be able to take colored photos of the moon, with stars in the background?

[palindrom]

I suspect that you're alluding to moon-landing hoax conspiracy theories, but I'm not well-enough versed in them to know which side you're on (if any).

[Nunnya]

Space is the sh*t.

[liberalNmoderation]

YES!
I concur wholeheartedly, that space is, indeed, the sh*t!

[slvrfox857]

Those shots are gorgeous. But someone I have lots of respect for told me once that the Hubble photos are black and white, the color is added in later. Is that true?

[jeremyemilio]

Yep. I used to be in awe of these types of pics until I learned that they were digitally enhanced and coloured by artists. Same thing happened to the fascination I once had (at the age of 14 or so) with the SI Swimsuit issue.

Sigh.

[liberalNmoderation]

They're both still real purty though!

[pakaal]

Bearing in mind they typically use chemical makeup to determine the "color" of various areas, hydrogen = orange, etc.

Sure, it's not an actual color photo, but it's not like they're randomly colorizing the photos either, there's a reason they pick the colors they are....

[palindrom]

No, they're pretty close to real color. However, to get the color they take pictures with a black-and-white detector, but using color filters - for instance, they might take a picture using a blue filter, another using green, and another using red. The final color image is painstakingly assembled from the individual pictures. Just how they do this is something of an art, and it's often hard to guarantee that the object would actually look like that (if your eye could respond to very low light levels). But the images are not just randomly colored for artistic effect -- it has a basis in reality.

[palindrom]

For some reason my first two replies to this were dropped or lost. In any case, the cameras are black and white, but they take images through different filters (like red, green, and blue) and put the color image together by combining these filtered-light images. So they're basically real color. Because the images are so faint, there's some leeway as to how to balance the color; also, some images are taken using filters that admit wavelengths the eye cannot see, which are still printed using regular colors the eye can see; the color information then definitely isn't what you'd see, but it's still based on reality.

[Rosewren]

Go to the site below and you will get a more complete explanation of how and why they add the colors to the photos.

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of_color/

[PanBaccha]

If you look deeper you'll see in the Crab Nebulla image an internal image of what appears to be a soldier with hands postured in prayer.

[chonus]

Woah. That's crazy.

[chonus]

How did you spot that?

[TamPhi]

I think he's meditating

[pakaal]

I think he's cupping his hands around a match while lighting a cigarette. You can even see the smoke coming up from the cigarette.

[SamKnause]

I'm upset. I can't see it. I'll try again. I have been starring at it for a while.

[liberalsrheros]

you can go to http://hubblesite.org/ and download screen savers and high resolution files to print on your own. there is even a release of copyright letter to take to a printer if you want to haveit done for you. there huge files for an incredible wall mural.

note, mozilla didn't cooperate with the downloads i had to use incontinent exploder.

[BlueZoo]

Thanks a bunch! Terrific site and the screen saver facility is very special!

[audeo03]

NASA FTW!