M63, Sunflower Galaxy

47 Tucanae

Mammoth stars seen by Hubble - WR 25 and Tr16-244, located within the open cluster Trumpler 16

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The Department of Awesome Natural Phenomena has features amazing auroras before, but never an aurora on another planet! This extraordinary sight, brought to us by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is an incredibly colossal aurora taking place on Jupiter:

“At the gas giant’s north pole, the most powerful and luminous northern lights in the solar system shimmer and glow in an endless geomagnetic storm that’s larger than our entire planet.”

That’s right, Jupiter itself is already so awesomely huge that its auroras are larger than the planet Earth.

Watch this time-lapse video of the Jupiter auroras and then visit the Hubble website to learn more about this amazing phenomena.

[via Twisted Sifter and Gizmodo]

Galaxy Trio Arp 286:

NGC 5566 (bottom), NGC 5569 (left), & NGC 5560 (center)

Northern lights over Nyrölä, Finland. My cousin called me last night and said “There’s no clouds over the Central Finland and it’s very dark.”. And so we drove at midnight 30 miles out of the city to get these photographs. It was magical. -Eero

Spiral galaxy NGC 4911 in the Coma Cluster

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The Spider and the Fly - IC 417

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope floats ~93 million miles from earth as it silently observes our universe. In this image we see the nebula IC 417, located in the constellation Auriga, about 10,000 light-years away. Star formation is occurring rapidly in this nebula.

“A cluster of young stars called “Stock 8” can be seen at the top. The light from this cluster carves out a bowl in the nearby dust clouds, seen here as green fluff. Along the sinuous tail in the center and to the bottom, groupings of red point sources are also young stars.”

Credit: NASA/JPL

Eta Carinae and Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324), inside the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372)

The Running Chicken Nebula.

Image Credit & Copyright: Andrew Campbell

150,000 Stars - The Messier 2 Star Cluster

This massive Star Cluster (The Messier 2 Star Cluster) is 13 billion years old - making it one of the oldest star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. Not only is this Star Cluster ancient, it is one of the largest known star clusters. On a clear night away from light pollution, you can see M2 with the naked eye as a faint blur in the constellation Aquarius.

Credit: NASA/Hubble/SIMBAD Astronomy db