Visions of the Universe: Charting our understanding of the cosmos

The three bright stars on the left in this image are the stars of Orion’s Belt. Although part of a familiar constellation, a view such as this can never be seen with the naked eye. Only with long exposure time and a sensitive camera can we see the dramatic landscape of glowing gas and dust clouds that lie between the visible stars. This vast region of space includes the famous Orion and Horsehead Nebulae. Rogelio Bernal Andreo was the Winner of the ‘Deep Space’ category, Astronomy Photographer of the Year, 2010 (Orion Deep Wide Field © Rogelio Bernal Andreo, 2009)

Like an alien landscape, pools of hazy light stretch into the distance of this photograph taken near Bursa in Turkey. These lights, diffused by the dust and humidity of a heat wave, are from villages below. Artificial light can make viewing and photographing the night sky difficult, but here the beauty of the Milky Way can clearly be seen. Tunç Tezel was Highly Commended in the ‘Earth and Space’ category, Astronomy Photographer of the Year, 2012 (Sky away from the Lights © Tunç Tezel, 2010)

As the Earth rotates during the 30-minute exposure of this photograph the stars make trails around the sky’s south pole. Taken in Australia, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two neighbouring galaxies, appear as faint blurs in the sky. An equivalent photograph taken from Britain would show Polaris (the Pole Star) at the centre of the star trails. Ted Dobosz was the Winner of the ‘Earth and Space’ category, Astronomy Photographer of the Year, 2009 (Star Trails, Blue Mountains © Ted Dobosz, 2009)

The death of a star very much like the Sun allows us to glimpse our own distant future. As the star’s internal nuclear furnace begins to fail its outer layers are expelled back into space, forming a beautiful ‘Planetary Nebula’. Hubble’s camera is equipped with special colour filters to isolate the light from various chemicals. This image has been coloured to highlight nitrogen in red and sulphur in white (The Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302) © NASA/ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team)

The Hubble Space Telescope was sent into space in 1990. Orbiting outside the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere, it has taken the most breath-taking images of our universe. This photograph shows astronauts F. Story Musgrave (on the robotic arm) and Jeffrey Hoffman (inside the shuttle) during the first servicing mission, which repaired a flaw in the telescope’s primary mirror.

Even amateur astronomers can now image the universe at a level of detail that would have astounded previous generations. This image by Aggelos Kechagias was shortlisted for Astronomy Photographer of the Year, showing the flat disc of nearby galaxy Andromeda with its swirling spiral arms, composed of billions of stars, knots of pink hydrogen gas and dark lanes of dust. Our own Milky Way galaxy would look very smilar from Andromeda.

NASA's Cassini probe has sent back spectacular images of Saturn since it arrived near the solar system's sixth planet in 2004. This composite image shows off how image-processing techniques can be used to convey scientific information which could not otherwise be seen. Saturn’s clouds are shown in their natural colours but false-colour enhancement has been used to show the density of the icy particles which make up the rings.

This is one of the most iconic views of planet Earth, taken from the Apollo 11 spacecraft as it orbited the Moon in 1969. Describing the scene, astronaut Neil Armstrong said ‘It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small’.

Like other spiral galaxies, the Sombrero consists of a flat disc of stars surrounding a fatter central ‘bulge’. However, here this central core of stars extends out to encompass the whole of the disc in a halo of stars. Like most galaxies, the heart of the Sombrero conceals a dark secret: a super-massive black hole containing as much matter as a billion Suns.

This image from the Magellan spacecraft showed the surface of Venus underneath its dense cloud. The planet is revealed to be a tortured volcanic landscape scarred by vast forces from the planet’s interior. This false-colour image of Venus was created by bouncing radio signals off the planet’s surface. Unlike visible light, radio waves can penetrate the thick layers of cloud allowing us to map the planet in detail.

Stars like our Sun die slowly, gently expelling their outer layers over millions of years. But for stars more than ten times as massive as the Sun the end is extremely violent. When its nuclear fuel runs out, the core of the star collapses, triggering a huge explosion which rips the outer layers of the star apart, blasting them outwards. The Crab Nebula is the debris from one of these ‘supernova’ explosions.

The three bright stars on the left in this image are the stars of Orion’s Belt. Although part of a familiar constellation, a view such as this can never be seen with the naked eye. Only with long exposure time and a sensitive camera can we see the dramatic landscape of glowing gas and dust clouds that lie between the visible stars. This vast region of space includes the famous Orion and Horsehead Nebulae. Rogelio Bernal Andreo was the Winner of the ‘Deep Space’ category, Astronomy Photographer of the Year, 2010.

On 20 July 1969 Buzz Aldrin became the second man to set foot on the Moon. Following in the footsteps of mission commander Neil Armstrong, Aldrin is seen here next to the American flag, close to the landing site. Putting people on the Moon remains one of the most significant achievements in space exploration. It allowed photographs to be taken from the lunar surface for the first time.