NASA images: 5 ‘out-of-this-world’ photos from the Universe; check out

The US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has shared spectacular images from space of celestial bodies, planets, nebula, moon, star clusters, interacting galaxies, etc.

Here are a few images from space shared by NASA.

Eta Carinae

Eta Carinae may be about to explode, the time is not confirmed yet. It is a stellar system containing at least two stars with a combined luminosity greater than five million times that of the Sun, located around 7,500 light-years distant in the constellation Carina. Eta Carinae's mass is about 100 times greater than the Sun. According to NASA, about 170 years ago, Eta Carinae went through an unusual outburst which made it one of the brightest stars in the southern sky.

First close up image of Moon

Nasa released the first image of the Moon taken by the United States' Ranger 7 spacecraft on July 31, 1964. After 17 minutes, it crashed into the Moon on the northern rim of the Sea of Clouds. The 4,316 images sent back helped identify safe Moon landing sites for Apollo astronauts. Until then there were no closeup images of the lunar surface.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 3430

This detailed image of the spiral galaxy NGC 3430, which lies 100 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo Minor was taken by NASA Hubble Space Telescope. A nearby galaxy with gravitational interaction is enabling some star formation in NGC 3430 — visible as bright-blue patches but outside of the galaxy’s main spiral structure. NGC 3430’s distinct shape may be one reason why astronomer Edwin Hubble used it to help define his classification of galaxies. Edwin Hubble classified some four hundred galaxies by their appearance as spiral, barred spiral, lenticular, elliptical, or irregular.

 Spiral Galaxy NGC 6872

On July 22, 2024, in order to commemorate the 25th anniversary of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory launch, the Chandra team released this never-seen-before image of NGC 6872, a spiral galaxy in the Pavo (Peacock) constellation. This image demonstrates corners of the universe.

NGC 6872 is 522,000 light-years across which is more than five times the size of the Milky Way galaxy. In 2013, astronomers from the United States, Chile, and Brazil found it to be the largest-known spiral galaxy, based on archival data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. This record was surpassed by NGC 262, a galaxy that measures 1.3 million light-years in diameter, according to NASA.

The Penguin and the Egg

As a celebration of the second science anniversary of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the team released a near- and mid-infrared image of two interacting galaxies, The Penguin and the Egg on July 12, 2024.

Webb specialises in capturing infrared light – which is beyond what our own eyes can see. The ongoing interaction between the galaxies is from 25 and 75 million years ago, when the Penguin and the Egg completed their first pass. They will make several additional loops before merging into a single galaxy hundreds of millions of years from now.