carlzimmer:

Compared to Jupiter’s moon Europa, our planet is practically a desert, as this NASA image shows. It’s a computer visualization showing Europa and a dried-out Earth, with the volume of all their water represented by blue spheres.

(Details at APOD: 2012 May 24 - All the Water on Europa)

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Hickson Compact Group 90 

Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Sharples (Univ. Durham) 

dvdp:

April 21, the 2012 Lyrid meteor shower peaked in the skies over Earth

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Zodiacal Light Vs. Milky Way

Credit & Copyright: Daniel López, IAC 

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Orion’s Belt

Credit & Copyright: Martin Mutti, Astronomical Image Data Archive

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Orion’s Belt Continued

Credit & Copyright: Alan Smallbone 

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Annular Solar Eclipse

Image Credit & Copyright: Mikael Svalgaard 

Psychedelic Space

searchingforadventure:

Saturn

No computer editing has been done to this photo. Saturn is eclipsing the sun from the camera probe’s view. That little spot off to the upper leftside of her brightest rings… Well, that’s us. That’s Earth.

View Larger.

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Inside the Eagle Nebula

Credit & Copyright: T. A. Rector & B. A. Wolpa, NOAO, AURA 

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Anemic Galaxy NGC 4921 at the Edge

Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Cook (LLNL)

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GALEX: The Andromeda Galaxy

Credit: GALEX, JPL-Caltech, NASA 

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NGC 2170: Celestial Still Life

Credit & Copyright: Thomas V. Davis 

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All the Water on Planet Earth

Illustration Credit & Copyright: Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Howard Perlman, USGS

Explanation: How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth’s surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth’s radius. The above illustration shows what would happen is all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth’s Moon 

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Star Formation in the Tarantula Nebula

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, ESO, D. Lennon (ESA/STScI) et al., and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)