🌌 Deep space

Our Sun is an ordinary star. Some stars are hundreds of times bigger.

The Sun Our star, an ordinary one that keeps everything here alive. Betelgeuse A red supergiant in Orion that will one day explode. Alpha Centauri The closest star system to the Sun. Eta Carinae A pair of giant stars, one of them about 90 times heavier than the Sun. Mira A red giant star racing through space with a tail like a comet. Zeta Ophiuchi A runaway star, flung out when its partner exploded. Pistol Star One of the brightest stars known in our galaxy, hidden behind dust.

Crowds of stars born together. Open clusters are young and loosely grouped; globular clusters are ancient balls packed with hundreds of thousands of stars.

The Pleiades The Seven Sisters: a family of young stars you can see without a telescope. Omega Centauri The biggest and brightest globular cluster in the sky, with about 10 million stars. 47 Tucanae The second-brightest globular cluster in the sky, next to the Small Magellanic Cloud. Messier 5 One of the oldest star clusters in our galaxy, more than 12 billion years old.

Places where gravity is so strong that not even light escapes. We see them by what happens around them.

Sagittarius A* The giant black hole at the centre of our own galaxy. M87* The first black hole ever photographed. Cygnus X-1 The first black hole ever confirmed, feeding on a nearby star. Centaurus A A giant black hole at the heart of the closest active galaxy. V404 Cygni A black hole that woke up in 2015 with a burst of X-rays.

Giant clouds of gas and dust, where stars are born and where they end their lives.

Pillars of Creation Towers of gas and dust where new stars are being born. Orion Nebula The closest big star nursery, visible without a telescope. Crab Nebula The leftovers of a star that exploded almost 1,000 years ago. Carina Nebula A huge glowing cloud home to some of the biggest stars known. Ring Nebula A glowing smoke ring blown off by a dying star. Helix Nebula Nicknamed the “Eye of God”, a dying star shedding its layers. Horsehead Nebula A dark cloud of dust shaped like a horse’s head. Cat’s Eye Nebula Glowing shells of gas from a dying star, shaped like an eye. Southern Ring Nebula A dying star’s shells of gas, among the first photos from the James Webb Space Telescope. Tarantula Nebula A huge star nursery with spidery arms, in a galaxy next to ours. Lagoon Nebula A glowing cloud in Sagittarius, faintly visible without a telescope. Veil Nebula Delicate threads of gas from a star that exploded about 8,000 years ago.

Cities of billions of stars. The Milky Way is ours, and there are billions more.

The Milky Way Our home galaxy. The Sun is one of its hundreds of billions of stars. Andromeda Galaxy The nearest big galaxy, and one day it will merge with ours. Whirlpool Galaxy A beautiful spiral tugging on a smaller galaxy. Sombrero Galaxy A galaxy that looks like a wide-brimmed hat. Large Magellanic Cloud A small galaxy circling ours, bright in southern skies. Small Magellanic Cloud A little galaxy circling ours, next to its bigger partner. Triangulum Galaxy The third-biggest galaxy in our neighbourhood, after Andromeda and the Milky Way. Pinwheel Galaxy A huge spiral seen face-on, nearly twice as wide as the Milky Way. Cartwheel Galaxy A galaxy with a ring like a wagon wheel, made by a crash.