Misc. Astronomical Images

This category includes images of objects that may be formed by exotic phenomena that do not fit into any other category in the Image Gallery. These phenomena include gravitational lensing, which is the bending of light around a massive object before the light reaches the Earth; astrochemistry, the study of the chemical composition of astronomical objects; protoplanetary disks, small, rapidly rotating clouds of gas that may grow into full-sized planets; gamma-ray bursts, powerful discharges of energy expelled when a giant star collapses into a black hole; masers, or cosmology, the study of large-scale structure and evolution of the universe.

Click on any sub-category name below to view all the images in that sub-category, or click any thumbnail to view the details of that image.