30 Mind-Blowing Space Photos from 2012

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured this colorful view of the center of globular cluster NGC 6362 and released the image on Nov. 2. Globular clusters are some of the oldest structures in the universe, and the stars in NCG 6362 are around 10 billion years old.

This stunning photo shows the moon and Earth's atmosphere as seen from the International Space Station.

ESO's Very Large Telescope captured the most detailed infrared image of the Carina Nebula stellar nursery this February. This cloud of glowing gas is about 7,500 light years from Earth and includes several of the brightest and heaviest stars known.

A brilliant shot of Venus crossing the sun. Hinode spacecraft captured the image on June 6.

Located 650 light years from Earth, the Helix nebula is the cosmic remains of a dying star. In this combined image released Oct. 3 from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, the star's dusty outer layers glow from ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by its stellar core.

This image depicts the unilluminated side of Saturn's rings and was taken in green light with NASA's Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug. 19, 2012. The view was captured at a distance of approximately 1.5 million miles from Saturn. 

The ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile captured this image of a bright feather-like cloud of glowing gas. Called the Pencil Nebula, this streak of vibrant red and blue is part of a ring of wreckage resulting from a supernova explosion that occurred 11,000 years ago.

NASA's Curiosity rover this fall used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to capture dozens of high-resolution images that were combined into self-portrait images of the rover.

This view of the Thor's Helmut Nebula, also known as NGC 2359, was captured on Oct. 5. The helmet-shaped nebula is around 15,000 light-years away from Earth.

On Aug. 27, NASA released a high-resolution shot of the dark dunes and layered rock at the base of Mars' Mount Sharp, Curiosity's eventual destination. The image, which was taken on Aug. 23, looks south-southwest from the rover's landing site. The top ridge of the distant mountain is about 10 miles from the rover.

This composite uses a number of images of the Earth's surface taken by instruments onboard the Suomi NPP satellite on Jan. 4, creating an image similar to the famed "Blue Marble."

The crew aboard the International Space Station captured this extraordinary nighttime image from space while overlooking Moscow on March 28. The image captures the hazy green of the aurora borealis and the shining light of daybreak on the Earth's horizon. 

This cosmic skyrocket is actually a geyser of hot gas from a newborn star that splashes against and ricochets off a cloud core composed of molecular hydrogen. Known as Herbig-Haro 110 and spotted in the constellation Orion, the geyser is located some 1,300 light years from Earth. Hubble Space Telescope captured the image and NASA released it July 3.

The strange galaxy Centaurus A is pictured in an image released on May 16 by the European Southern Observatory. Centaurus A is a massive elliptical galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its heart. It's about 12 million light years away in the southern constellation of Centaurus.

This photo of a dying red giant star depicted an unexpected spiral structure around its center. Astronomers surmise that this might be what Earth's sun looks like at the end of its life. These spirals had never been seen by astronomers before and are believed to have been caused by a hidden companion star orbiting the red giant.

This composite image of M101 (also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy) combines data from four of NASA's space-based telescopes. X-rays from Chandra (purple) reveal the hottest and most energetic areas due to exploded stars, superheated gas, and material falling toward black holes. Infrared data from Spitzer (red) shows dusty lanes in the galaxy where stars are forming, while Hubble data (yellow) traces the light from stars. Ultraviolet emission detected by GALEX (blue) shows emission from young stars.

This stunning view of Earth reveals the planet at night in unprecedented detail, earning it the nickname, "Black Marble." Released by NASA Dec. 5, it was assembled from multiple shots taken by the Suomi NPP satellite during April and October 2012. The new data was mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic view of the planet.

This image of a cyclone over Saturn from NASA's Cassini mission was taken on Nov. 27 with Cassini's narrow-angle camera. The camera was pointing toward Saturn from approximately 224,618 miles away. 

A spectacular new image of the star-forming Carina Nebula was captured by the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory on June 5.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission recently discovered thousands of newfound supermassive blackholes and galaxies -- called Hot DOGs. These dust-obscured galaxies are twice as hot as similar objects and among the most luminous, brightest galaxies known. Some emit 1,000 times more energy than the Milky Way. On Aug. 29, NASA released images from the telescope, marking the new Hot DOGs with magenta symbols.

NASA's Hubble Telescope captured this image of Eta Carinae, a binary star system. In 1843, Eta Carinae was the second-brightest star in the night sky, but by the 20th century, it was invisible to the naked eye. Eta Carinae happens to be one of the closest stars to Earth that is likely to explode in a supernova in the relatively near future (though in astronomical timeframes, the "near future" could still be a million years away). 

Described as a "dusty curtain" or "ghostly apparition," mysterious reflection nebula VdB 152 is very faint. Also called Ced 201, it is nearly 1,400 light years away.

On July 2, Hubble Space Telescope posted this portrait of dying star Camelopardalis (U Cam for short) as it released a spherical shell of gas. U Cam is becoming increasingly unstable, and every few thousand years the red giant's core fuses and it expels stellar material in these eruptions. Although the star itself is small enough to fit into a single pixel of the photo, its brightness makes it appear much larger than it is.

Eclipse-hunters flocked to Queensland, Australia's tropical northeast on Nov. 14 to watch the region's first total solar eclipse in 1,300 years. 

Mammoth Tarantula Nebula is an interstellar cloud made up of helium, hydrogen, dust and gases. According to NASA, it's "one of the largest star-forming regions located close to the Milky Way." It got the name because its filaments were thought to look like spindly spider legs. NASA released the image in April of this year.

This incredible image of the central parts of the Milky Way was created by combining thousands of individual images from ESO's VISTA survey telescope into a single monumental mosaic. The image depicts a much larger number of individual stars in the central parts of the Milky Way than was previously able to be seen because VISTA's camera is sensitive to infrared light and can see through much of the dust that blocks the view for optical telescopes. 

On Jul 20, NASA released the highest-resolution images ever taken of the sun's corona. The corona is the plasma atmosphere around the sun, usually only visible during solar eclipses. The High Resolution Coronal Imager, or Hi-C, captured this detailed shot.

Astronomers discovered a "super-Jupiter" (seen in the upper left of this image) around the bright star Kappa Andromedae. Designated Kappa Andromedae b, the new object has a mass about 12.8 times greater than Jupiter's. This places it on the dividing line that separates the most massive planets from the lowest-mass brown dwarfs.