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This view of the July 2, 2012 M5.6 class solar flare was captured by the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) satellite.

The protostar V1647 Orionis resides at the tip of a conical glow called McNeil's Nebula, which was discovered in January 2004 near the peak of an outburst. This image, from the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini Telescope in Hawaii, shows the nebula as it appeared on Feb. 14, 2004.

SUMI’s instruments are designed to study magnetic fields of the sun’s chromosphere -- a thin layer of solar atmosphere sandwiched between the visible surface, photosphere and its atmosphere, the corona. Hinode, a collaborative mission of the space agencies of Japan, the United States, United Kingdom and Europe, captured these very dynamic pictures of our sun's chromosphere on Jan. 12, 2007.

A fiery image from NASA's WISE mission shows the Flame nebula "burning" a hole in the cosmic dust.

Relatively few galaxies possess the sweeping, luminous spiral arms or brightly glowing center of our home galaxy the Milky Way.

This is an image taken from one of NASA’s two special "Webb-cams,” a camera in a giant clean room at NASA Goddard. The Webb-cams focus on what's happening with the very first completed instrument that will fly onboard the James Webb Space Telescope. The flight Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) is at left center. The Ambient Optical Assembly Stand is on the right side of the image.

The Soyuz TMA-03M capsule with astronauts Don Pettit, Oleg Kononenko and ESA astronaut André Kuipers touchdown on Sunday 1 July 2012 at 08:14 GMT. They landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan after 193 days in space.

Wildfires Seen From Station
A video camera aboard the International Space Station captured this footage of the wildfires burning in the Western U.S., including Colorado.

This artist's rendering illustrates the evaporation of HD 189733b's atmosphere in response to a powerful eruption from its host star. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope detected the escaping gases and NASA's Swift satellite caught the stellar flare.