80 Stellar Pics From NASA’s Instagram Account

Gaze in awe: An astronaut aboard the International Space Station snapped this image of the South Indian Ocean as the station flew 265 miles above the cloudy formation. The off-world laboratory orbits the Earth about every 90 minutes and helps us prepare for deep space exploration. The astronaut crews conduct experiments about Earth, space and the physical and biological sciences, benefitting people living on our home planet and future explorers. As a testbed for deep space exploration, the station is helping us learn how to keep astronauts healthy during long-duration space travel and demonstrating technologies for human and robotic exploration beyond low-Earth orbit

Astronaut Christina Koch recently took this photo of a moonrise over the atmosphere from the International Space Station. Koch just received news this week that instead of returning to Earth this October, she will remain in orbit until February 2020, which will set a new record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. The previous mark of 288 days was set by our Peggy Whitson

Spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station with about 7,600 pounds of science investigations and cargo after launching on an Antares rocket on Wednesday, April 17, from NASA Wallops in Virginia

During its mission, our Cassini spacecraft captured the sun glinting off of Titan's north polar seas, seen in this near-infrared, color mosaic from August 21, 2014. The sunglint also called a specular reflection, is the bright area near the 11 o'clock position at upper left. This mirror-like reflection, known as the specular point, is in the south of Titan's largest sea, Kraken Mare, just north of an island archipelago separating two separate parts of the sea. The southern portion of Kraken Mare displays a "bathtub ring" -- a bright margin of evaporate deposits -- which indicates that the sea was larger at some point in the past and has become smaller due to evaporation. The deposits are material left behind after the methane & ethane liquid evaporates, somewhat akin to the saline crust on a salt flat

Coating the night sky like sprinkles on an ice cream scoop, this globular cluster contains an incredible half-million stars! This 8-billion-year-old cosmic bauble called Messier 3 is one of the largest and brightest globular clusters ever discovered, seen here in a NASA Hubble image. What makes Messier 3 extra special is its unusually large population of variable stars that fluctuate in brightness over time. New variable stars continue to be discovered in this sparkling stellar nest to this day, but so far, we know of 274, the highest number found in any globular cluster by far

Double the rocket, double the beauty. On April 5, we successfully launched two sounding rockets from Norway that reached 200 miles in altitude before returning back to Earth. Carrying scientific instruments to studying the energy exchange within an Aurora, the launch of these rockets created colorful clouds that allow researchers to track the flow of neutral and charged particles with the auroral wind

It's not another world. It's Earth and it's the Eye of the Sahara. From an altitude of 255 miles, a crewmember on the International Space Station (ISS) photographed the Richet Structure in north-western Mauritania. The circular geologic feature is thought to be caused by an uplifted dome—geologists would classify it as a domed anticline—that has been eroded to expose the originally flat rock layers

Infused with swaths of red, blue and yellow, this infrared image of Jupiter’s atmosphere reveals that solar wind has a strong influence on the planet. Within just a day of solar wind hitting Jupiter, scientists observed the chemistry in its atmosphere changing and its temperature rising

No, this is not a mirage. That desert is blooming Due to a very rainy winter season for the Antelope Valley in California, the desert is covered with a canopy of yellow wildflowers and orange blooming poppies. This colorful view was captured by our pilots from nearby NASA Armstrong Flight Research Centre

Nothing like a classic Hubble image to get us to Friday. This image of Saturn from 1998 is so brightly colored because it was captured in infrared light, in order to reveal clouds and hazes in the planet’s atmosphere

Astronaut Anne McClain completed her first spacewalk Friday, March 22, 2019, outside the International Space Station. In doing so, our cameras captured this up-close image of her working in space, as our near star shines down on the only home we have ever known

Arguably the best light show this festival season, Our SOFIA telescope captured this cosmic set sparkling on the galactic stage. These massive stars, many times larger than our Sun, can affect the formation of their stellar siblings by releasing astronomical amounts of energy. We brought you a glimpse from the best seat in the house

We stan the brightest and largest object in our night sky - the Moon! It also happens to be the only place beyond Earth where humans have set foot. Here's a view captured by acrorhagus while in orbit aboard the International Space Station

This NASA Hubble image reveals the gradual self-destruction of an asteroid, whose ejected dusty material has formed two comet-like tails. The longer tail stretches more than 500,000 miles and is roughly 3,000 miles wide. The shorter tail is about a quarter as long. The streamers will eventually disperse into space

Spotted this spring: A cosmic butterfly fluttering on wings made of interstellar gas and dust. Inside this galactic nursery, you will find the environment in which hundreds of stars are waiting to be born

Our NASA Hubble Space Telescope captured this fuzzy orb of light — a giant elliptical galaxy filled with an incredible 200 billion stars. At a distance of 56 million light-years and measuring 157,000 light-years across, this was the first member of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies to be discovered, and it is more luminous than any other galaxy at its distance or nearer

A new view of Jupiter from the camera on our Juno spacecraft reveals the planet's turbulent southern hemisphere

Pulsars are super dense, rapidly spinning neutron stars left behind when a massive star explodes. This one is hurtling through space at nearly 2.5 million miles an hour — so fast it could travel the distance between Earth and the Moon in just 6 minutes

This infrared portrait shows the Witch Head nebula, named after its resemblance to the profile of a wicked witch. Spotted by our Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, the Witch Head nebula is estimated to be hundreds of light-years away in the Orion constellation. Astronomers say the billowy clouds of the nebula, where baby stars are brewing, are being lit up by massive stars. Dust in the cloud is being hit with starlight, causing it to glow with infrared light that was picked up by our detectors

Today, we're spilling all the about a massive storm raging in a galaxy hosting this structure nicknamed the "Teacup”. The source of the cosmic squall? A supermassive black hole buried at the center of the galaxy. Located about 1.1 billion light years from Earth, this object’s "handle" is a ring of optical and X-ray light, while the cup is a black hole known as a quasar

On its 15th close flyby of Jupiter, our spacecraft spotted a long, brown oval known as a brown barge in the South Equatorial Belt. Brown barges are cyclonic regions that usually lie within Jupiter's dark North Equatorial Belt, although they are sometimes found in the similarly dark South Equatorial Belt as well. They can often be difficult to detect visually because their color blends in with the dark surroundings.  At other times, as with this color-enhanced image, the dark belt material recedes, creating a lighter-colored background against which the brown barge is more conspicuous. Brown barges usually dissipate after the entire cloud belt undergoes an upheaval and reorganizes itself. Juno is giving us the first glimpses of the detailed structure within such a barge.  Since 2016, Juno has been penetrating Jupiter’s deep, colorful zones and belts in a quest to answer fundamental questions about the gas giant planet's origin and evolution

These six infrared images of Saturn's moon Titan, as compared with the center image of Titan as it appears in natural light, represent some of the clearest, most seamless-looking global views of the icy moon's surface produced so far. The views were created using 13 years of data acquired by an instrument on board our Cassini spacecraft. The images are the result of a focused effort to smoothly combine data from different observations made under various lighting and viewing conditions.  Observing the surface of Titan is difficult because of the haze surrounding it and small particles called aerosols in the upper atmosphere that scatters visible light. While this is the case, Titan’s surface can be more readily observed in a few infrared "windows" - infrared wavelengths where scattering and absorption of light are much weaker. This is where our instrument excelled, parting the haze to obtain these clear images of Titan’s surface.  This unique set of images shows Titan’s complex surface, sporting myriad geologic features and compositional units. Our technology has paved the way for future infrared instruments that could observe Titan at much higher resolutions, revealing features that were not detectable by any of Cassini’s instruments

Nothing quite likes the chaotic beauty of colliding galaxies.  The NASA Hubble telescope captured these galaxies crashing into each other inside of the Hercules constellation, about 230 million light-years away. They were first discovered in 1784 by William Herschel and were originally classified as a single irregular galaxy because of their odd shape

Astronaut Anne McClain shared these images of an Earth plush toy that arrived on International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon that launched on Saturday, March 2 and docked to the orbiting lab on Sunday, March 3. Loaded onto the spacecraft prior to launch, Elon Musk, founder, CEO, and lead designer of SpaceX called the plush toy a super high tech zero-g indicator. During the mission, astronaut Anne McClain shared what normal life was like on the orbiting outpost with the Earth plush toy. Living and working in space, they worked out, conducted science experiments, tested emergency procedures and more

The surface texture of interconnected ridges and troughs found in the mid-latitude regions of Mars may be directly related to the water ice that lies beneath the surface.  One hypothesis is that when the buried water ice changes from a solid to a gas, it forms troughs in the ice. This image was taken by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), an instrument onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter