NASA images: Our planet Earth is a part of a giant solar system, which is placed in a humungous galaxy named the Milky Way. Our home galaxy is a large spiral galaxy with a star disk spanning over 1,00,0000 light-years. Surprisingly, ours is not alone, as Space contains numerous galaxies home to thousands of planets and stars.

Space agencies like NASA and ESA keep sharing images of Sun, nebulas, and our neighbouring galaxies, including the one located thousands of light years away from the Milky Way.

The Small Magellanic Cloud is one of the closest galaxies to our Milky Way: it’s “only” 210,000 light-years away. Nestled within the Small Magellanic Cloud is this spectacular star cluster, which is unleashing light and energy into the nebula surrounding it.

This photo from NASA Hubble telescope combines observations of the star cluster in ultraviolet and visible light; these blazing blue stars are giving off UV rays which are then picked up by Hubble’s delicate instruments.

Studying this star cluster in ultraviolet is helping scientists learn how the birth of stars shapes the interstellar space around them.

In these images from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Andromeda galaxy consumes streams of gas and dust. ⁣

⁣As supermassive black holes “eat,” material heats up just before it falls in, creating incredible light shows — sometimes brighter than an entire galaxy full of stars. But the black hole at the center of Andromeda (one of our nearest galactic neighbors) is a “quiet” eater, meaning that the little light it emits does not vary significantly in brightness. This suggests that it is consuming a small but steady flow of material, rather than large clumps. ⁣

X-rays radiate off the Sun in this image showing observations from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuStar, overlaid on a picture taken by our Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO). Taken in 2014, this was the first picture of the Sun taken by NuStar, which covers the west limb of the star.⁣

⁣The NuStar data, seen in green and blue, reveals high-energy emissions like X-rays; the red channel represents ultraviolet light captured by SDO, showing the presence of lower-temperature material in the solar atmosphere. SDO continues to study the Sun from its perch in geosynchronous orbit, 22,000 miles (or 36,000 km) above Earth — the third planet from our home star.⁣

This tangled planetary nebula is the final stage of a medium-sized star like our Sun—billions and billions of years from now. While consuming the last of the fuel in its core, the dying star pushes out a large part of its outer layer, creating the twisted filaments you see here.

Don’t let their name get you mixed up: planetary nebulae don’t actually have anything to do with planets. When early astronomers first looked at them through telescopes, they appeared large and indistinct, like some planets did—and the name stuck. This crisp image was taken through a much more powerful telescope: NASA Hubble observatory.

Eta Carinae may be about to explode, but no one knows when. It could be in the relatively near future, though (astronomically speaking) that may be a million years away. With a mass about 100 times greater than our Sun, Eta Carinae makes an excellent candidate for a full-blown supernova, or the explosion of a star.⁣

⁣The fireworks started in the 1840s when Eta Carinae went through a titanic outburst in Earth’s skies, called the Great Eruption, making it the second-brightest star visible for over a decade. Eta Carinae, in fact, was so bright that for a time it became an important navigational star for mariners in the southern seas. It is also the only star currently thought to emit natural laser light.⁣