10 rare images of galaxies shared by NASA

This illustration shows the Milky Way, our home galaxy.

The Whirlpool Galaxy is a spiral galaxy located 31 million light-years away. Also known as M51, it highlights the attributes of a typical spiral galaxy, including graceful, curving arms, pink star-forming regions, and brilliant blue strands of star clusters.

The elliptical galaxy NGC 4660 is one of a hundred galaxies imaged by Hubble that are members of the nearest large galaxy cluster to Earth, the Virgo Cluster.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing new details about star formation and the galaxy’s central black hole.

The dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 4214 resides about 10 million light-years away. 

Approximately 10,000 galaxies fill a small area of sky called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. This is the deepest image of the universe ever made at optical and near-infrared wavelengths.

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula.

The center of our Milky Way galaxy is hidden from the prying eyes of optical telescopes by clouds of obscuring dust and gas.

NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) observed magnetic fields showin in this composite image of Centaurus A.

The magnificent spiral arms of the nearby galaxy Messier 81 are highlighted in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.