Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/CfA/F.Massaro, et al.); Optical (NASA/STScI/C.P.O’Dea); Radio (NSF/VLA/CfA/F.Massaro, et al.)

Unusual and intriguing shapes float out of this combined starry image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore the reds, oranges, blues and green of this watercolor-like image. What shapes or stories do you see? Leave a note below.

A supermassive black hole at the center of this galaxy, known as 3C305, gives us the shapes and colors we see in this image. Red colors in this image come from X-rays picked up by Chandra. Light blue in the image is visible light observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers use different filters to see different kinds of light and elements in the space images. Light blue in this image is from glowing oxygen gas within the galaxy and jets so we’re not seeing the entire galaxy which contains billions of stars. Other colors in the image are from radio observatory observations.

Using a combination of information from many different telescope sources allows astronomers to get a better idea of what is happening within the galaxy. Galaxy 3C305 is found about 600 million light years from Earth toward the constellation Draco, the dragon. It is considered an active galaxy, or a quasar. Radio and X-rays coming from these objects are much stronger than other types of galaxies.

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

With arms entangled, this galaxy merger resembles the letters “g” or “j” or perhaps a sea horse with a long tail arching over its head.

Explore this image of the interacting galaxy IRAS 20351 from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. What pictures do you see? Leave a note below.

Dive deep into IRAS 20351+2521 and you’ll see vast dust clouds, nebulae and knots of blue stars. These patches are hot new stars born within the last million years. When galaxies interact, gas and dust are pushed and pulled together. These clouds can collapse under their own gravity and new stars can form. Sometimes scientists call these galactic collision although no stars collide. Eventually the stars that make up the two interacting galaxies will settle in new orbits around a new galactic center.

The bright stars in the image are closer stars within our own Milky Way Galaxy. IRAS 20351 is found about 450 million light-years from Earth toward the constellation Vulpecula. Vulpecula is a curious small constellation near the dense star clouds of Sagittarius. The shape of Vulpecula is the imagination of Johannes Hevelius, who created the constellation in the late 17th century. He thought it represented a “fox with the goose.” Vulpecula is the Latin word for fox.

Credit: ESA and NASA

Stars burst into life in the belly of the Whale Galaxy in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore the bright glow from the galaxy’s central bulge, the dust patterns and star clouds in the image. What pictures does your imagination create? Leave a note below.

NGC 4631, or the Whale Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy probably similar to our own Milky Way. We are seeing the galaxy edge-on, from the side. Instead of whirling spiral arms, we are peering at the bright galactic center through its dusty arms. The Whale Galaxy is experiencing a galactic starburst with many stars being formed in short period of time. Even as you peer deep in to the galaxy and outward along its spiral arms, look for blue patches of stars. These are hot, young stars.

The Whale Galaxy is a fairly close galaxy; at least in the neighborhood. It is found about 30 million light-years from Earth toward the constellation of Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs. The galaxy is not even on both sides, suggesting a whale or fish shape to astronomers who first discovered and studied the galaxy.

Credit: NASA/CXC/UCSC/L. Lopez et al.

Tucked away in the constellation Centaurus, a colorful bubble of gas and dust resembling a jellyfish, is all that remains of a great star.

Explore the supernova remnant of G292 in this image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. What shapes and stories do you see in this image? Leave a note for us.

Supernovae occur in a couple of different ways. In one type of supernova, a white dwarf gathers star material from a companion star. Eventually, the core temperature rises to a point where runaway nuclear fusion occurs and it explodes. Astronomers call these Type 1a supernovae.

In another type of supernova, a very massive star collapses after burning all of its hydrogen fuel. These stars are so big that they use up all of their fuel in just a few million years. When this happens, the star can collapse suddenly creating a neutron star or black hole. The star material heats up to incredible temperatures and then explodes away from the surface. Supernovae release so much energy that for brief spans of time they can outshine an entire galaxy. Material from supernovae help create elements for future star and planet creation. Elements found on Earth, such as gold, silver, and uranium, were created in supernovae explosions.

G292 is the second type of supernova. Astronomers studying data from Chandra imagery have found that supernovae remnants of this variety are more symmetrical. If you cut the remnant in half, both sides would look very similar.

Medium-sized stars such as our Sun are not massive enough to become a supernova. In about 4.5 billion years from now, our Sun will burn the last of its hydrogen fuel, become a red giant. The out layers of the Sun will puff out into space and our star will blossom into a planetary nebula.

G292 is found about 20,000 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Centaurus, the Centaur.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI

This image of the Large Magellanic Cloud resembles a galactic puffer fish in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

Explore this mosaic of of 300,000 images showing bright bands of stars and thick regions of dust. What patterns or stories do you see in this image? Leave a note below.

The Large Magellanic Cloud, found about 160,000 light-years from Earth, is just one of many dwarf galaxies that are associated with the Milky Way Galaxy. The LMC is about one-third as wide as the Milky Way and only about one-third of that can be seen in this image.

Astronomers use colors to represent different temperatures and densities inside a galaxy or nebulae. The blue color in this image near the center is starlight from older stars. Chaotic regions outside the blue bar are filled with hot, massive stars buried in blankets of dust. The red color around these bright regions is from dust heated by these young stars. Red dots across the image are either old stars or far-away galaxies. Greenish clouds contain cool gas and dust lit by starlight. Astronomers use images like this to see how space dust, the stuff that makes up planets and people, is recycled and spread across a galaxy.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Fans of glowing interstellar gas dominate a nebular lagoon in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore Messier 8, also known as the Lagoon Nebula. What shapes and stories do you see floating in this surreal scene of gas? Leave a note below.

Bright and massive stars, still hidden within the cloud, send out a torrent of high-energy ultraviolet radiation and a blistering stellar wind. The wind shapes the cloud forming the fan-like shapes, peaks and valleys in the dust. The ultraviolet radiation excites molecules of hydrogen and other elements creating hues of bright color. Eventually the stars born in this star cloud will blow away all the surrounding material leaving a group of hot, blue stars. For now, scientists have to use telescopes like the Hubble to pierce the thick dust to study the objects within the cloud.

First recorded in 1747 by French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil, the Lagoon Nebula is a huge structure of glowing gas and dust. The nebula spans more than 140 light-years in one direction; 60 light-years in another. If the Sun were at the edge, the nebula would easily encompass some of the brightest stars in our night sky, including Alpha Centauri, Aldebaran, and Sirius.

Messier 8 lies about 5,000 light-years from Earth. It can be seen with the naked eye glowing faintly in the constellation of Sagittarius, the Archer.

Credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/WISE Team

A colorful jellyfish floats in this image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.

What stories or images do you see in this explosion of light and color? Leave a note below.

IC 443, also known as the Jellyfish Nebula, is a supernova remnant. Created by a colossal stellar explosion, IC 443 shows an expanding bubble of debris. What interests scientists most is the way the explosion affects the surrounding area. Stars like our Sun usually become planetary nebula. But stars with many times the mass of the Sun burn through their nuclear fuel quickly. Within just a few million years, these massive stars explode. Their light can easily outshine an entire galaxy for a brief time. IC 443 is all that remains of a star that exploded 5,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Explore the expanding shockwave surrounding the supernova. This supernova blast wave moves through thick cloud of gas and dust. The wave sweeps aside and heats the gas and dust causing it to glow. Colors in this infrared image show the differences in energies of the shockwave. The upper part of the shell, seen as a violet, shows a fast shockwave while the bottom half, with its bluish colored tendrils, was hit with a slower shockwave. Elements such as iron, neon, silicon and oxygen give the upper half its purplish color.

IC 443 is found about 4,890 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Gemini, the Twins. The expanding shell of debris is about 65 light-years across.

The WISE orbit­ing tele­scope sur­veyed the sky from Decem­ber 2010 until it was turned off in Feb­ru­ary 2011. To view the uni­verse in infrared wave­lengths, the satellite’s sen­sors had to be kept very cold. Coolant needed to keep its images sharp ran out and the satel­lite stopped send­ing use­ful data.

Credit: ESO

A hunter lurks in a starry sea in this image from the European Southern Observatory.

Explore the colorful regions of gas and dark dust clouds of the Carina Nebula around the blazingly brilliant star called WR 22. What shapes and stories can your imagination tell? Share them below.

WR 22 is one of those stars that lives fast and dies young. This rare star is very hot and massive star and is bursting with so much radiation and solar wind that is shedding its atmosphere into space. Formed from the Carina Nebula, WR 22 is known as a Wolf-Rayet star. It is one of the most massive stars known. These stars are more than 20 times more massive than our Sun and lose material to space at a much higher rate.

French astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet discovered this class of stars in 1867. WR 22 lies about 5,000 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Carina, the keel of Jason’s ship Argo from Greek mythology. The image was taken with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

A whale swims deep in this scene of stars, gas and dust.

Explore this image of IC 1590 from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. What pictures and stories does your imagination see in this image? Leave a note below and let us know.

IC 1590, is an open star cluster within a large nebula known as NGC 281. Also called the Pacman Nebula because of the resemblance of the entire nebula to the popular arcade game, NGC 281 is a star nursery. Astronomers call the glowing red cloud an emission nebula. The new stars born from this cloud give off ultraviolet light that causes the surrounding nebula to glow. All of the stars of IC 1590 were formed at about the same time from the same cloud. They are also loosely bound by gravity. Eventually, in the next 10 million years or so, the stars will disperse and wander the galaxy on their own. Other stars within in this nebula will form as gas and dust clouds collapse under their own gravity. Stars may be forming right now in some of the dark globs of dust in the image. Explore the dark tendrils of gas as they reach up for the whale in the image. This is the top part of the Pacman’s mouth.

IC 1590 lies about 10,000 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Casseopeia, the Queen. The nebula itself is a faint target to see in small telescopes. But the triple stars found at the top of the image are easier to pick out.

Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

What looks like a gaggle of Martian tadpoles turns out to be a series of lava tubes on Pavonis Mons, a volcano on Mars, in this image from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft.

Explore the series of channels as you travel across Mars. What other stories and pictures do you see in this image? Share a note below.

Rising more than 39,000 feet (12 kilometers) above the surrounding plains, Pavonis Mons is the central volcano of three that make up the Tharsis Montes. Called shield volcanoes, these three gently sloping mountains, dwarfing the largest mountains on Earth, look like flattened domes and are built mostly of thick, slow-moving lava over a long period of time.

Scientists found what they think are lava tubes along the south-west flank of the volcano. Lava tubes are formed by hot flowing lava. As the surface cools, a crust forms on top. Lava continues to flow beneath the hardened surface. When lava stops flowing and the tube is empty, the roof collapses leaving long, wormlike depressions. The longest tube in this image extends for about 36 miles (59 kilometers) and is more than a mile wide in some places. Lava tubes are well-known features here on Earth and have been found on the Moon as well.

Mars Express launched in 2003 as part of a series of probes sent to explore the Red Planet. Mars Express carries a wide variety of instruments to explore the planet. The greatest strength of the mission is its High Resolution Stereo Camera. The camera has a two-meter resolution; meaning objects as small as two meters can be seen in the images. Scientists are using it to image the entire planet in full color.