25 Awe-Inspiring Images of the Milky Way Galaxy

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  2. A Star Is Born

  Cold hydrogen gas brimming with dust marks the birth site of a new star formation in the Carina Nebula.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  3. Spinning in Infinity

  This planetary nebula marks the impending death of two stars that orbit each other every 16 days, resulting in two inflated "bubbles" of gas.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  4. Burst Into Light

  This massive nebula, named NGC 3603, houses thousands of young stars.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  5. Gaseous Shell

  A shell of gas expands around a massive star, shaped by winds and radiation from the nearby star. The star you see on the left is 10 to 20 times larger than our sun.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  6. Carina Nebula

  This mosaic of the Carina Nebula comes from images taken by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope, along with ground-based observations.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  7. Homesteaders

  Globular clusters such as this one were born during the formation of the Milky Way galaxy. Hundreds of thousands of stars are held together by the bonds of gravity. This particular cluster, NGC 2808, is home to more than 1 million stars.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  8. Some Like It Hot

  This monumental image is the clearest to date of one of the hottest known stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The superstar is the white dot at the center of the image.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  9. Bubbling Over

  This "bubble" made from the radiation and winds of hot, young stars is 70 light years in diameter and probably took about 1 million years to form. In that time, it has spawned two groups of young stars.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  10. Reflection

  This nebula in the constellation Orion is known as a reflection nebula, meaning that instead of emitting light, its dust reflects the light of an embedded source.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  11. Black Hole

  This image shows the large supernova near Sagittarius A, the large black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, as well as the lobes of hot gas extending on either side of the hole.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  12. An Angelic Achievement

  This ethereal image is the largest ever compiled from individual stills from NASA's Hubble Telescope.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  13. Celestial Industry

  Within the constellation Vulpecula, raw material is so abundant that it creates a veritable assembly line of new stars.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  14. Growing Pains

  This image beautifully captures stars in a variety of life stages. Adult stars, like our sun, are white, until they mature and turn orange. Eventually, they cool off and become the large red giants until they eject most of their mass and burn a brilliant blue. Once they've used all of their hydrogen fuel, they become white dwarfs (the faint blue dots in the image).

  IMAGE: NASA
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  15. Birth from the Ashes

  In this cold and turbulent region of the Milky Way galaxy, material is beginning to condense into new stars.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  16. Shockwave

  This small portion of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant marks the edge of a shockwave from a 15,000-year-old colossal stellar explosion.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  17. Burn, Baby, Burn

  The star in the upper lefthand corner, near the red dust cloud, is named Menkhib, and is one of the hottest stars visible in the night sky.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  18. Quintuplet Cluster

  This star cluster, captured by the Hubble Telescope, is one of the largest young clusters of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  19. Cassiopeia

  The constellation Cassiopeia contains a large, star-forming nebula called the Heart Nebula. You can even catch a glimpse of two neighboring galaxies in this mosaic.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  20. Magic Changes

  The Wizard Nebula has a cluster of stars that is only about 5 million years old, making it relatively young.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  21. The Center of the Galaxy

  The center of the Milky Way galaxy is home to new populations of massive stars, located in the hot, ionized gas that makes up the central 300 light years.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  22. Unicorn's Rose

  This flower-shaped nebula is called the Rosette Nebula, and is located within the constellation Monoceros, also known as the Unicorn.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  23. The Central Cluster

  In this photo, the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras penetrate much of the dust and gas that surrounds the galaxy's center to reveal a cluster of stars.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  24. Hidden in the Dark

  While the naked eye perceives only blackness, hidden in the constellation Cepheus is a dark nebula, whose dust blocks incoming light.

  IMAGE: NASA
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  25. Seagull Nebula

  This nebula received it's name from its "bird in flight" shape, but when rotated 180 degrees, it looks more like a galloping lizard.

  IMAGE: NASA

http://mashable.com/2013/08/06/milky-way-galaxy-images/