The ancient peo­ples saw pic­tures in the sky. From those pat­terns in the heav­ens, ancient sto­ry­tellers cre­ated sto­ries about heroes, maid­ens, drag­ons, bears, cen­taurs, dogs and myth­i­cal crea­tures. What kid doesn’t see drag­ons and angels in the clouds while lying in warm grass on a sum­mer after­noon? What grown-up doesn’t wish upon a shoot­ing star? So lie back and imag­ine the ani­mals, insects and pat­terns swirling in these Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, Spitzer Space Tele­scope and other obser­va­tory images. We believe the expla­na­tions are best suited for par­ents, edu­ca­tors and upper-grade stu­dents. Par­ents of younger chil­dren may find it help­ful to explore the uni­verse together with their child. Par­ents can use the explana­tory text as a guide. Inter­act with the images and find your own pat­terns in the stars. Con­jure your own sto­ries and set­tings and share them. Leave a com­ment on the site about what you see in the images. We love to share your stories.

J. Morse/STScI, and NASA

A three tril­lion mile-long jet called HH-47 resem­bles a glow­ing worm in this NASA Hub­ble Space Tele­scope image. Jets are com­mon around newly formed stars. They are the exhaust prod­uct of the chaotic for­ma­tion of the star.

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NASA, ESA, and M. Livio (STScI)

Our brains try to find order in the extra­or­di­nary images we see from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope and cre­ate pat­terns in the night sky. In this image of Arp 147, we see what looks like a one and a zero, or a ten.

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NASA, ESA and Michael West (ESO)

Occa­sion­ally, I find huge fur­balls tucked away in the far cor­ners of my house. They sit all by them­selves, alone, after rolling around gath­er­ing up other fur­balls and assorted smaller pieces of fuzz. Like my huge fuzzballs, ESO 306–17 dom­i­nates its area of the uni­verse. Explore the image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope and you’ll see plenty of other galax­ies. Count up all those spi­ral galax­ies. Those galax­ies, how­ever, are either far­ther away or, like the two bright galax­ies at the bot­tom of the image, much closer than the giant ellip­ti­cal galaxy.

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NASA, ESA, the Hub­ble Her­itage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Col­lab­o­ra­tion, and A. Evans (Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)

A great encounter between a starry sea diver, at the top, and some­thing big­ger below is play­ing out in this image. That’s what I see. What sto­ries can you tell about this image?

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NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Sand dunes resem­bling mil­li­pedes march across Mars in this image from the HiRISE cam­era aboard Mars Recon­nais­sance Orbiter.

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NASA, ESA, the Hub­ble Her­itage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Col­lab­o­ra­tion, and A. Evans (Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)

Galaxy inter­ac­tions are always impres­sive. ESO 593–8 looks like a swoop­ing eagle or a feather. Explore the NASA Hub­ble Space Tele­scope image of these merg­ing galax­ies. Do you see any pat­terns? What sto­ries can you tell?

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Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hub­ble Her­itage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

A dragon swoops in to pro­tect its jew­els in this image of NGC 3603. Thou­sands of sparkling new stars form one of the most mas­sive star clus­ters in the Milky Way Galaxy.

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Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hub­ble Her­itage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Col­lab­o­ra­tion, and K. Noll (STScI)

These galax­ies seem to me like starfish arm wrestling or toss­ing a ball. NGC 6050 and IC 1179 offer a stun­ning exam­ple of merg­ing spi­ral galax­ies in this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope.

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Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hub­ble Her­itage Team (STScI/AURA)

Would you like fries with that giant cos­mic ham­burger? Gomez’s Ham­burger is a strange plan­e­tary neb­ula that looks like a ham­burger but it’s actu­ally a sun-like star near­ing the end of its life. The cen­tral star, which we can­not see in this image, expelled large amounts of gas and dust and may one day develop a more famil­iar col­or­ful, glow­ing plan­e­tary neb­ula.

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Every­one should wan­der over to the Car­ni­val of Space #142 this week. Starry Crit­ters dives into the new Hub­ble, Spitzer, and GALEX image of inter­act­ing galax­ies that make up Hick­son Com­pact Group 31.