The best space telescope images (24 images)

The New Solar Telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory captures the most detailed image of a sunspot in a photo released on September 1, 2010. The image was taken on July 2, 2010 under the direction of New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) professor Philip R. Goode at BBSO in Big Bear, California. For perspective, the Earth is slightly smaller than the whole sunspot including the dark umbra and the daisy petal-like penumbra. UPI/Big Bear Solar Observatory

This NASA image taken by Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope on November 20, 2006, reveals the structure of the solar magnetic field rising vertically from a sunspot, an area of strong magnetic field, outward into the solar atmosphere. (UPI Photo/NASA/Hinode JAXA)

This new Hubble Space Telescope photo released by NASA shows a portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. Captured here are the top of a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and the dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being pushed apart from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks like arrows sailing through the air. UPI/NASA

A new picture from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope bears remarkable similarities to the Vincent van Gogh work called "Starry Night", complete with never-before-seen spirals of dust swirling across trillions of miles of interstellar space. This image, obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on February 8, 2004, is Hubble's latest view of an expanding halo of light around a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon). The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a flashbulb-like pulse of light two years ago. V838 Mon is located about 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Monoceros, placing the star at the outer edge of our Milky Way galaxy. (UPI Photo/NASA)