Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular Galaxy (sagDIG) © Hubble

this morning NASA abandoned their mars rover Opportunity (aka Oppy) because it (she) got hit by a storm on Mars and it knocked her camera and wheels out and her last words to the team were “my battery is low and it is getting cold”. I know she’s a machine but I’m devastated. Oppy is the one who discovered water on Mars. RIP oppy ily space baby

Voyager 2: Rings of Neptune (August 1989)

[...] while compartmentalization and replication are important, they are aspects of what life is and does, but they do not address the why of life. The why of life is metabolism. By completing the circuit of life, biology harnesses energy from its environment. Technically speaking, this means that biology actually helps the universe cool faster; it increases the entropy of the universe. This is why the universe needs life.

Alien Oceans by Kevin Peter Hand

A beginner’s star-book, an easy guide to the stars and to the astronomical uses of the opera-glass, the field-glass and the telescope, 1912

The glittering globular cluster Terzan 12 — a vast, tightly bound collection of stars — fills the frame of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This star-studded stellar census comes from a string of observations that aim to systematically explore globular clusters located towards the centre of our galaxy, such as this one in the constellation Sagittarius. The locations of these globular clusters — deep in the Milky Way galaxy — mean that they are shrouded in gas and dust, which can block or alter the wavelengths of starlight emanating from the clusters.

Here, astronomers were able to sidestep the effect of gas and dust by comparing the new observations made with the razor-sharp vision of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide-Field Camera 3 with pre-existing images. Their observations should shed light on the relation between age and composition in the Milky Way’s innermost globular clusters.

[Image Description: The frame is completely filled with bright stars, ranging from tiny dots to large, shining stars with prominent spikes. In the lower-right the stars come together in the core of the star cluster, making the brightest and densest area of the image. The background varies from darker and warmer in colour, to brighter and paler where there are more stars.]Credit:

ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen (Rutgers University)

www.spacetelescope.org

Glittering globular cluster Terzan 12

Glittering globular cluster Terzan 12

Shadows of Saturn

Vibrant Virgo Cluster Galaxy NGC 4654 by NASA Hubble

Astronomical photographs, Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, 1890-1920

The dancer in Dorado

800 megapixel

Clearest photo of a galaxy you will ever see!

shit man this got me emotional