Karen B 🇺🇸 🌻

ALT Starburst galaxy NGC 1482 glows in the darkness as observed by the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope on NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. Two bright white stars appear as dots spaced apart from each other at an angle. They are both surrounded by small bright halos of light and faint dark purple outer rings. Coming from each star are long, white spikes of light. Surrounding the stars is a very faint galaxy almost hidden by the stars’ brightness with smaller stars and galaxies speckled throughout. This image is watermarked with “Credit: NASA/Swift/E. Hoversten, PSU.”

ALT Galaxy cluster SDSS J0952+3434 looks like it has a smiley face in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Near the bottom center of the image are two bright orange galaxies form "eyes," and a reddish one forms a "smile" as it is warped by gravitational lensing. Sprinkled throughout the rest of the image are other galaxies in a variety of shapes and colors. This image is watermarked with “Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (geckzilla).”

ALT The Chandra X-ray Observatory's view of the Perseus galaxy cluster looks like a flaming skull in space. In the center of the image are two large orange bubbles of gas with smaller bubbles between them. They are surrounded by bright yellow gas that gives it a skull-like appearance. A slightly muddled, orange gradient disk of gas extends outward. This image is watermarked with “Credit: NASA/IoA/A. Fabian et al.”

ALT Astronomers using the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope captured this striking image of Markarian 739, also known as NGC 3758. This object is the result of the merger of two galaxies, each with a supermassive black hole at its center. Fuzzy light pink arms mottled with brown dust lanes wrap around a glowing core with two bright spots sitting side-by-side, like eyes. An arm below curves around like a smiling mouth. A few smaller, blurrier objects appear in the outskirts of the image, in various sizes, shapes, and colors. This image is watermarked with “Credit: ESO/Turbin et al.”