Cool Pictures | Cool Stuff: January 2011

Showcasing the best cool pictures of space over the years with amazing images of the moon, planets in our solar system, astronauts to the deepest reaches of outer space thanks to Nasa. The pictures give us a greater insight and understanding of not only our solar system but of other galaxies from the super powerful hubble telescope. Check out the space videos after the pictures for some real eye opening footage.

Cool Pictures of Space

First Full-View Photo of Earth
This famous "Blue Marble" shot represents the first photograph in which Earth is in full view. The picture was taken on December 7, 1972, as the Apollo 17 crew left Earth’s orbit for the moon. With the sun at their backs, the crew had a perfectly lit view of the blue planet.

In this stunning image provided by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the Omega Nebula (M17) resembles the fury of a raging sea, showing a bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen gas and small amounts of other elements such as oxygen and sulfur.

Photograph courtesy NASA

From the Spitzer Space Telescope, check this amazing star formation picture!


Hand of God! Full details here: http://planet-pictures.blogspot.com/2009/04/hand-of-god-stunning-photo-captured-by.html

Hubble telescope snaps a beautiful picture of a Nebula within a Cluster.

Jupiter looks sharp in the crispest whole-planet picture of the gas giant ever shot from Earth, released in October.
(Photo: NASA)

An image released by NASA in April shows baby stars taking shape in the Southern Pinwheel galaxy. Embryonic stars were found to be growing in the galaxy's spindly arms (shown in red), rather than in its bright heart.
(Photo: NASA)

The remnant of a supernova called SN 1006 hangs like a gumball 7,000 light-years away in a composite image released by NASA on June 26, 2008. The blast wave from the stellar explosion is still traveling at about 6 million miles (9.6 million kilometers) an hour, heating gases along its path that emit radiation in visible light.
(Photo: NASA)

A supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way has wound up in the crosshairs of a virtual telescope spanning 2,800 miles (4,506 kilometers). Although by definition we can't see a black hole directly, we can see the bright region of radio emissions known as Sagittarius A* that's thought to be either a disk of matter swirling toward the black hole, or a high-speed jet of matter being ejected from it.
(Photo: NASA)

When the red supergiant V838 Monocerotis suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002, it showed it was cloaked in a never-before-seen cloud structure. The burst of light reflecting off the clouds, called a light echo, was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

A full-disk multiwavelength extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken by SDO on March 30, 2010. False colors trace different gas temperatures. Reds are relatively cool (~60,000 K); blues and greens are hotter

Photograph courtesy NASA

An image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope gives the clearest view ever of the Quintuplet star cluster, a massive collection of young stars 25,000 light-years from Earth but only a hundred light-years from the center of the Milky Way. The cluster's proximity to the core of our galaxy means it is destined to be ripped apart in just a few million years.

Photograph courtesy NASA

An infrared image reveals clouds of dust swaddling the stars of the Seven Sisters cluster, also known as the Pleiades. The cluster, located some 400 light-years away, formed about 100 million years ago. It contains thousands of stars but gets its name from seven of its brightest members.

Photograph courtesy NASA/Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows debris from the massive Cassiopeia A supernova arranged into thousands of small, cooling knots of gas. Each clump, originally just a small fragment of the star, is tens of times larger than the diameter of our solar system.

Helix Nebula

Photograph courtesy NASA/ESA/C. R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University)

The familiar eyeball shape of the Helix Nebula shows only two dimensions of this complex celestial body. But new observations suggest it may actually be composed of two gaseous disks nearly perpendicular to each other.

Cool Space Videos

Below we feature a selection of some of the coolest video of space available on the web.

Planet Earth (Views From Space)

Voyage through space and galaxies

The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken

Look! Up in the Sky! The Very Best of Hubble

The Known Universe by AMNH

NASA UFO Anomalies caught on film
Finally for those UFO lovers out there, check out these NASA Alien Anomalies caught on film - A compilation of stunning UFO footage from NASA's archives