This picture of the Whirlpool Galaxy (also known as Messier 51a; discovered by the great French astronomer Charles Messier in 1773; or M51a, or NGC 5194) was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy is located about 31 million light years from our Milky Way galaxy and is part of the constellation Canes Venatici. The very distinctly spiral shaped, interacting and grand design Whirlpool Galaxy is estimated to be home to approximately 270 billion stars.
The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took this picture of the open star cluster M7 in June, 2010 using a 100-millisecond manual exposure. The LORRI is part of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on its way to Pluto. Star cluster M7 (Messier 7) is also referred to as NGC 6475. It is an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Scorpius that is visible with the naked eye. This star cluster has been seen by humans since ancient times, and has also been called the Ptolemy Cluster after being discovered by the by the first century Greek-Roman astronomer, Ptolemy.
NASA’s Hubble Space telescope and the Spitzer telescope combine for this beautiful image comprising of both the infrared and visible light spectrum (image is a false colour composite). The Orion Nebula is about 1,500 light years from Earth and is the bright part of the Orion/Hunter constellation. This picture shows many young/baby stars and four very large stars at the center of this cosmic cloud.
