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.

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

Inter­act­ing galax­ies form a Pac-Man shape mov­ing in to devour a dis­tant galaxy in this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope.

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Credit: NASA, ESA and Moham­mad Heydari-Malayeri (Obser­va­toire de Paris, France)

Cold doesn’t actu­ally have a color; well, maybe blue lips in the win­ter­time. To help us see new stars being born deep within the thick dust of neb­u­lae, astronomers use spe­cial tele­scopes to see the star’s glow.

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

Arms of dark dust tightly wind around the bright cen­ter of NGC 2787 in this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Telescope.

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Credit: NASA, ESA, Moham­mad Heydari-Malayeri (Obser­va­toire de Paris, France)

New stars in N83B are blow­ing bub­bles in this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope.

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

Resem­bling a starry ducky, a pair of far­away galax­ies known as IRAS 21101+5810, merge together in a sky crowded with nearby stars from our own Milky Way.

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Credit: Euro­pean Space Agency & NASA

A clus­ter of jew­els, known as NGC 265, glows in the Small Mag­el­lanic Cloud.

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Credit: NASA, ESA, E. Jullo (JPL/LAM), P. Natara­jan (Yale) and J-P. Kneib (LAM).

Some­times what we can’t see is as impor­tant as what we can. Using new tech­niques, astronomers are help­ing solve the big mys­tery of dark energy in the Uni­verse and per­haps its ulti­mate fate.

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Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Look­ing like the closeup of an elephant’s hide, polyg­o­nal ridges form odd geo­met­ric pat­terns on Mars.

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Credit: NASA, ESA and Moham­mad Heydari-Malayeri (Obser­va­toire de Paris, France)

Fierce radi­a­tion from N11A’s cen­tral star is shap­ing a del­i­cate rose in space in this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope.

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Credit: NASA, ESA and Orsola De Marco (Mac­quarie University)

Strange shapes, leap­ing fish and pin­cers can be found in the col­or­ful sea of gas and dust amid bright blue stars in the star–form­ing region of NGC 2467.

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