Top 5 NASA images of nebulas, protostar, Mercury’s surface & more | See pics

NASA images: Our planet Earth is a part of a giant solar system, which is placed in a humungous galaxy named the Milky Way. Our home galaxy is a large spiral galaxy with a star disk spanning over 1,00,0000 light-years. Surprisingly, ours is not alone, as Space contains numerous galaxies home to thousands of planets and stars.

Space agencies like NASA and ESA keep sharing images of nebulas, our neighbouring galaxies and planets.

Here are the top 5 images captured by the space agencies:

The eerie glow of a dead star, which exploded long ago in a supernova, reveals itself in this NASA Hubble image of the Crab Nebula. But don't be fooled: the ghoulish-looking object still has a pulse. Buried at the center is the star's tell-tale heart, which beats with rhythmic precision.

The "heart" is the crushed core of the exploded star. Known as a neutron star, it has the same mass as the Sun but is squeezed into an ultra-dense sphere that is only a few miles across. The tiny powerhouse is the bright star-like object in the center of the image.

The cosmic concoction NASA Webb has spotted here is a nebula in the Perseus molecular cloud, located approximately 960 light-years away.⁣

Webb’s sensitive scopes can reveal cosmic objects with extremely low masses. Some of the faintest “stars” in the picture are, in fact, newly born free-floating brown dwarfs with masses comparable to those of giant planets. The gas and dust that surround these young stars are part of the ingredients that may eventually produce planetary systems.⁣

⁣On 12 October 2012, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft captured this targeted observation of a small area of Mercury's surface, where two smaller craters on the rim of a larger crater resemble a pair of eyes.

MESSENGER was first spacecraft to visit Mercury in 30 years, and the first ever to orbit. The spacecraft mapped the entire planet, discovered abundant water ice in shadows at the poles, and unlocked knowledge about Mercury's geology and magnetic field.

MESSENGER's mission came to an end on 30 April 2015.

This light-year-long knot of interstellar gas and dust that looks a little like a caterpillar is a newborn star – a protostar.

Stars form in large clouds of gas and dust called molecular clouds. These massive clouds are cold and clump up. Eventually, gravity causes some of these clumps to collapse. When this happens, friction causes the material to heat up, eventually leading to the creation of a protostar.

A protostar hasn’t yet developed the energy-generating capabilities of a star like the Sun, which fuses hydrogen into helium in its core. Instead, a protostar’s energy comes from the heat released created by that initial collapse. In time, the protostar will develop the ability to generate energy like other Sun-like stars.

The Small Magellanic Cloud is one of the closest galaxies to our Milky Way: it's "only" 210,000 light-years away. Nestled within the Small Magellanic Cloud is this spectacular star cluster, which is unleashing light and energy into the nebula surrounding it.

This photo from NASA Hubble telescope combines observations of the star cluster in ultraviolet and visible light; these blazing blue stars are giving off UV rays which are then picked up by Hubble's delicate instruments. Studying this star cluster in ultraviolet is helping scientists learn how the birth of stars shapes the interstellar space around them.