Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

A dragon lurks in the vast spaces between constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus in the image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.

Explore the cool dense clouds of gas and dust. A curvy dragon-shaped nebula rises in the middle of the image. What shapes and patterns does your imagination create? Leave a note below.

When we look up into this part of the sky at night we see dark space between the stars of Cassiopeia and Cepheus, named after the ancient Queen and King of Ethiopia in Greek mythology. But with WISE’s infrared telescopes, the cool gas and dust of the region glow brightly.

Dozens of nebulae are spread across this image. And within, massive stars have blown bubbles in the clouds. These nebulae and bubbles are hundreds of light-years across. As these huge stars blaze into existence, their blistering radiation and strong solar winds push the gas and dust away, clearing an area for the star to glow. Astronomers find these huge stars interesting but as the gas and dust is compressed at the edge of the bubbles new stars pop into being. Each part of this image contains a piece of a puzzle that together gives astronomers a complete idea of how a star is created. The radiation from the new stars cause the clouds to glow brightly in this infrared image.

Also visible in the image is the remains of an explosion that destroyed a sun. A supernova blazed in this part of the sky. Astronomer Tycho Brahe witnessed this explosion in 1572 AD.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

A giant star-forming region sets the perfect backdrop for a cosmic pterodactyl clutching a gem.

Explore the nebula SH 2–235 in this image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, spacecraft. What stories or images do you see in the image? Leave a note below.

From side to side, SH 2–235 is more than 100 light-years across. This nebula was created when two vast star clouds collided. The collision started a burst of star birth across the region. The sensors on WISE pick up the faint heat found in star-forming clouds. Ultraviolet light and strong stellar winds from a young star called BD+35°1201 cause the surrounding clouds of hydrogen gas to glow. Look for bright orange objects at the end of the curl of glowing gas. This cluster of stars are massive stars forming from the cold gas. Many different stages of star formation are found in this image.

As you wander across the image, notice several red colored clumps. These baby stars are still wrapped tightly in the thick blankets of dust from which they were created. Their warmth glows brightly in infrared light. In the bottom right of the image is a bright red mysterious object. The object was first spotted by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, or IRAS, as an indistinct bright spot. WISE reveals it as a hazy glow. Scientists will be using this image to learn more about this object and association with the nebula.

SH 2–235 is as part of a stellar catalog created by Stewart Sharpless in 1959. He created his Sharpless Catalogue to chart areas of ionized gas clouds called HII regions. The nebula is found on the other side of the galaxy between 5,000 and 8,000 light years from Earth in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

Rich colors spill across a tapestry of dust and gas in this image of the Rho Ophiuchi star cloud from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

Explore the arcs, folds and wrinkles in an image that resembles a painting. Your imagination should come up with lots of shapes and stories in this image. Tell us what you see in the image by leaving a note below.

The star cloud is named after a bright star in the region of the constellations Ophiuchus and Sagittarius. The nebula is one of the closest star-making regions to Earth allowing astronomers a clear look at the processes surrounding star birth. The pink stars near the center of the image are young stellar objects. In visible light, these stars are hidden from view. They are so young that they are still wrapped tightly in blankets of dust.

Explore a bit deeper in the image and you’ll find some of the oldest stars in our galaxy. M80, a distant globular cluster, is found on the far right of the image near the top. Another globular cluster known as NGC 6144 is found close to the bottom center of the image. They appear as tightly compacted groups of blue stars. Born soon after the universe formed, they are thought to be about 13 billion years old.

The bright white region in the center of the image glows with heating from nearby stars. Astronomers call this an emission nebula. Young, bright stars send out a blistering stream of ultraviolet radiation that excites the gas atoms in the nebula and causes them to glow like a neon sign. Most of the gas and dust in this image glows from that process including the blue arc of light just above the reddish nebula. The dust in the red region reflects light from the light of Sigma Scorpii. Astronomers call this type of nebula a reflection nebula. Throughout the image float cold, dark and dense clouds of dust. WISE sees the universe in infrared, seeing warm sources of light even in the darkest clouds. The orbiting telescope can usually penetrate these dark clouds but these are especially opaque to the satellite’s sensors meaning they are very cold. Astronomers call this type of interstellar cloud absorption nebulae.

The stunning array of color in this image represent different wavelengths of infrared light. Blue, cyan and the blue-green hues represent hot sources of light such as stars. The green and red color comes mostly from dust.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

A dragon, tongue flicking out, struts along this rocky landscape on Mars in this image from NASA’s HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Explore this image of this terrain dominated with rocky hills and sand dunes within Holden Crater. Share other shapes and stories you see in this image by leaving a note below.

Holden Crater, in the tropics of Mars, is one of several landing sites scientists are considering for the Curiosity mission. The car-sized rover, a big brother to the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, will roam the surface analyzing and gathering samples and taking photos along the way. The image shows some of the reasons why scientists are interested in sending Curiosity to Holden Crater. Look for light-toned layered rock covered by the darker, windblown dunes. The layers may have been deposited by ancient lakes. Perhaps these lakes were home to ancient life on Mars. If we could zoom out to see all of Holden Crater, scientists think they see evidence for massive flooding. The flooding would have rearranged boulders, bringing new material to the surface.

Launched with Mars Recon­nais­sance Orbiter, or MRO, in 2005, HiRISE is one of six instru­ments aboard the space­craft orbit­ing Mars. HiRISE’s cam­era can see objects on the sur­face as small as a beach ball. The instru­ment can also offer sci­en­tists stereo views of the sur­face.

Credit: H. Schweiker/NOAO/AURA/NSF and T. A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage and NOAO/AURA/NSF

Braided filaments of glowing gas and dust snake around the dim Medusa Nebula in this image from National Optical Astronomy Observatory, or NAOA.

Explore the twisted remnants of this ancient planetary nebula. Like its mythological namesake, these glowing tendrils of gas and dust look like a mess of snakes from telescopes on Earth. Also known as Abell 21, the Medusa Nebula was once thought to be a supernova remnant because of its immense size. The nebula spans more than four light-years; it would take a starship traveling at six trillion miles per year, more than four years to cross from one side of the nebula to the other. In the 1970s, however, Soviet astronomers determined that the object was probably a planetary nebula. A planetary nebula represents the final stage in the evolution of smaller stars like our Sun. At the ends of their lives, stars like our Sun transform into red giants when their hydrogen fuel runs out. The stars puff up, shrugging their outer layers creating an expanding shell of material that becomes the planetary nebula. A super-hot white dwarf star, the dead core of the star, is all that remains. Ultraviolet radiation spews from the white dwarf causing gas in the expanding bubble of material to glow.

As you explore, notice the dozens of far-off galaxies in this deep image of the nebula.

The Medusa Nebula is found about 1,500 light-years from Earth toward the zodiacal constellation Gemini, the Twins.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Povich (Penn State Univ.)

A dark dragon appears to shoot out of a bright nebula in this image of M17 from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

M17 is a dusty place where stars are born. In this infrared image from Spitzer, M17 glows with the light of giant newborn stars. Explore the wispy clouds, dark lanes of dust and bubbles of this nebula. The bright blaze of light and color near the bottom is home to the most massive type of star, known as an O-type star. These stars are many times heavier than our Sun. Intense winds from these stars blow bubbles in the nebula.

Right now, M17 is moving through the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. Waves of star formation will be triggered as the gas and dust of the nebula interacts with gas and dust of the spiral arm. New stars are being born within the dusty dragon, called M17SWex. Sometime in the future, the dark nebula will flare up like the bright nebula nearby.

Also known as the Omega Nebula or the Swan Nebula, M17 is found about 6,800 light-years from Earth toward the rich starfields of the constellation Sagittarius. Swiss astronomer Philippe Loys de Chéseaux discovered the bright nebula in 1745. French astronomer Charles Messier catalogued the object in 1764.

Credit: ESO

The twisted remains of a dying star resemble a Chinese dragon in this image of NGC 5189 by the European Southern Observatory.

Explore the red and green filaments. NGC 5189 has a curious “S” shape with a central bar spewing out jets. At the end of its life, stars like our Sun start puffing out their outer layers as they run out of hydrogen gas that fuels fusion in their cores. These expanding bubbles of gas are usually shaped like bubbles and look like gas planets in telescopes. That’s where the name planetary nebulae came from. All that is left behind is the dead, dense, hot-white core of the star. Intense radiation coming from this white dwarf causes the gas within the expanding shell to glow with the colors we see.

NGC 5189 is obviously different. One possibility is that a very close, unseen companion star pulls the material as the orbit drifts around the star.

This image was taken with the New Technology Telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The 3.58-meter telescope was the first in the world to have a computer-controlled main mirror. Many current large telescopes now use this technology.

Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

A dragon spits star dust in the Carina Nebula. This dragon is part of a huge glowing and swirling cloud of gas and dust. In this image we see star birth as well as star death within the Great Nebula in Carina, also known as NGC 3372.

But it’s more than that. We find that giant stars, on the verge of going supernova, cause the gas to swirl and glow. And inky, dark dust globs that look like tadpoles, called Bok globules, hide new stars. We also find new shapes to explore and ponder; birds, caterpillars and sea monsters. We see all this in the larger mosaic of images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Share what you see as you explore the nebula.

From side to side, the entire Carina Nebula spans 300 light years. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles. It is a very large nebula in Earth’s skies but it lies far in the southern hemisphere so it’s not well known. Astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille discovered the nebula in 1751–52 during a science trip to the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa.

The Carina Nebula is about 7,500 light-years away toward the constellation Carina the Keel. Carina is a constellation in the southern hemisphere. it is part of an older constellation group called Argo Navis, after the ship that carried Jason and the Argonauts.

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.

Explore this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. What other stories can you create? The jewel box nestles within a glowing cloud of gas and dust; the original material from which the cluster was made. Fierce winds from the hot, blue suns have driven back the dust cloud forming fantastic shapes and landscapes of pillars and swirls. The star cluster is one of the most densely packed clusters known to astronomers. Some of the stars toward the center of the cluster are blue giants, with a mass much greater than our Sun. These monster stars burn out quickly, living only a few million years before exploding in a supernova. Also, find Bok globules within the cloud. These inky, black globs of dust may eventually collapse to form new stars.

NGC 3603 is found about 20,000 light-years away in a star-forming region of the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way. The nebula was discovered by John Frederick William Herschel in 1834.

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

A firestorm brews in this dragon nest. Whether you see a dragon rising above or an amoeba with antenna in this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, NGC 604 is one of the largest known areas of star birth. NGC 604 is a vast star cloud, larger than the Orion Nebula and contains stars only about 3 million years old. More than 200 bright blue stars lie within this glowing cloud of gas and dust.

NGC 604’s gas and dust clouds form a stellar nursery, a place where new stars are born. As these dust clouds swirl and move around, eddies form. When enough gas and dust come together in one place, gravity causes the dust cloud to collapse on itself. Eventually, this dense area of gas begins to glow as fusion processes start and a star is born. The blue stars forming at heart of NGC 604 are hot and huge. The most massive stars in NGC 604 are more than 120 times heavier than our Sun. Ultraviolet radiation flows out from these hot stars making the surrounding nebula glow. Strong solar winds and supernova have carved out the fanciful landscape we see in the nebula.

At 1,300 light years across NGC 604 is nearly 100 times the size of the Orion Nebula. First noted by English astronomer William Herschel in 1784, NGC 604 lies in a spiral arm of the Triangulum Galaxy, or M33. As galaxies go, M33 is right next door, only about 2.7 million light years away toward the small constellation Triangulum. The galaxy is part of what astronomers call the Local Group, that also includes the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds.