How many rings do you see in this new image of galaxy Messier 94, also known as NGC 4736? At first glance one might see a number of them, astronomers believe there is just one. This image was...

This artist's concept illustrates the frenzied activity at the core of our Milky Way galaxy. The galactic center hosts a supermassive black hole in the region known as Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*,...

The spinning vortex of Saturn's north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

This image shows the first holes into rock drilled by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, with drill tailings around the holes plus piles of powdered rock collected from the deeper hole and later discarded.

This artist's concept illustrates how charged water particles flow into the Saturnian atmosphere from the planet's rings, causing a reduction in atmospheric brightness.

The recently formed south polar vortex stands out in the color-swaddled atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in this natural color view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

The tip of the 'wing' of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy is dazzling in this new view from NASA's Great Observatories. The SMC, is a small galaxy about 200,000 light-years way that orbits our...

W3 is an enormous stellar nursery about 6,200 light-years away in the Perseus Arm, one of the Milky Way galaxy's main spiral arms as seen by ESA's Herschel space observatory.

This view of Curiosity's left-front and left-center wheels and of marks made by wheels on the ground in the 'Yellowknife Bay' area comes from one of six cameras used on Mars for the first time...

Astronomers have discovered some of the youngest stars ever seen thanks to the Herschel space observatory; dense envelopes of gas and dust surround the fledging stars known as protostars, make...

This mosaic of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows Mount Sharp in a white-balanced color adjustment that makes the sky look overly blue but shows the terrain...

On this image of the rock target 'Knorr,' color coding maps the amount of mineral hydration indicated by a ratio of near-infrared reflectance intensities measured by the Mastcam on NASA's Mars...

The dark hot spot in this false-color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft is a window deep into Jupiter's atmosphere. All around it are layers of higher clouds, with colors indicating which layer...

NASA's Curiosity rover shows the first sample of powdered rock extracted by the rover's drill. The image was taken after the sample was transferred from the drill to the rover's scoop.

NASA's Kepler mission compares artist's concepts of the planets in the Kepler-37 system to the moon and planets in the solar system. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon.

At the center of this image from NASA's Curiosity rover is the hole in a rock called 'John Klein' where the rover conducted its first sample drilling on Mars.

The percussion drill in the turret of tools at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been positioned in contact with the rock surface in this image from the rover's front...

The HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this series of pictures of sand dunes in the north polar region of Mars. Each panel shows ice cracks releasing dark sand as spring...

In this new view of the Andromeda, also known as M31, galaxy from the Herschel space observatory, cool lanes of forming stars are revealed in the finest detail yet. M31 is the nearest major galaxy...

A Martian rock in the 'Yellowknife Bay' area of Mars' Gale Crater is illuminated by white-light light emitting diodes is part of the first set of nighttime images taken by the MAHLI camera at the...