The Hubble Space Telescope revealed this majestic disk of stars and dust lanes in this view of the spiral galaxy NGC 2841. A bright cusp of starlight marks the galaxy's center. Spiraling outward are dust lanes that are silhouetted against the population of whitish middle-aged stars. Much younger blue stars trace the spiral arms. Notably missing are pinkish emission nebulae indicative of new star birth. It is likely that the radiation and supersonic winds from fiery, super-hot, young blue stars..

Just in time for Valentine's Day comes a new image of a ring -- not of jewels -- but of black holes. This composite image of Arp 147, a pair of interacting galaxies located about 430 million light years from Earth, shows X-rays from the NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink) and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue) produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute, or STScI. Arp 147 contains the remnant of a spiral galaxy (right) that collided with the elliptical...

Nebulae are enormous clouds of dust and gas occupying the space between the stars. Some have pretty names to match their good looks, for example the Rose nebula, while others have much more utilitarian names. Such is the case with LBN 114.55+00.22, seen here in an image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Named after the astronomer who published a catalogue of nebulae in 1965, LBN stands for "Lynds Bright nebula." The numbers 114.55+00.22 refer to nebula's coordinates in...

Dextre, the Canadian Space Agency's robotic "handyman", is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 26 crew member aboard the International Space Station on Feb. 3, 2011. Dextre completed its first real job since the robot passed its final exam in December 2010, unpacking two critical pieces of equipment delivered by the unpiloted Japanese Kounotori2 H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV2) spacecraft - the space equivalent of a moving van. HTV2 is the second unpiloted cargo ship launched by...

Students from Ferebee-Hope Elementary School in Washington, D.C., take turns trying on a glove from a space suit on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2011. Ferebee-Hope Elementary School, in collaboration with Reading is Fundamental, hosted this event in honor of Black History Month, and to highlight the importance of reading. NASA Associate Administrator for Education and STS-129 astronaut Leland Melvin read to first and third grade students at the school from the book The Moon Over Star during the event.