🔭
Space Explorer
A tour of galaxies, nebulae, planets and moons
Real photos taken by Mr Rowing from Praslin, Seychelles 🇸🇨
Galaxy
The Whirlpool Galaxy
M51 — 25 million light-years away
🌀 This is actually two galaxies — the big spiral is M51 and the small blob at the top is its companion galaxy. Gravity is pulling them together!
⚡ Wow fact: The light you see here left before humans even existed on Earth.
25,000,000
light-years away
Galaxy
The Pinwheel Galaxy
M101 — 21 million light-years away
🌌 We're looking straight down on this spiral galaxy from above, which is why we can see its beautiful swirling arms so clearly!
⚡ Wow fact: It contains about ONE TRILLION stars — that's 1,000,000,000,000.
1 trillion
stars inside
Galaxy
NGC 7331
40 million light-years away
🌠 NGC 7331 looks a lot like what our own Milky Way might look like from the outside — a tilted spiral with a bright central bulge and sweeping arms.
⚡ Wow fact: We can never photograph the Milky Way from outside because we live inside it. NGC 7331 is our best guess of what home looks like!
40,000,000
light-years away
Nebula
The Veil Nebula
NGC 6995 — 2,100 light-years away
💥 These wispy glowing ribbons are the remains of a giant star that exploded about 10,000 years ago. The explosion is called a supernova.
⚡ Wow fact: The original star was 20× bigger than our Sun. When it exploded, you could see it in the daytime sky!
110
light-years across
Nebula
The Crescent Nebula
NGC 6888 — 5,000 light-years away
🌬️ A massive hot star is blowing a powerful wind of gas out into space — like a giant cosmic sneeze — creating this crescent shape.
⚡ Wow fact: The central star's surface is over 70,000°C. Our Sun is about 5,500°C.
25
light-years wide
Nebula
The Lagoon Nebula
M8 — 4,100 light-years away
🌸 A giant cloud of gas and dust where new stars are being born right now! The pink glow is hydrogen gas heated by those newborn stars.
⚡ Wow fact: It's so bright you can sometimes spot it with just your eyes on a very dark night — no telescope needed!
110
light-years across
Nebula
The Ring Nebula
M57 — 2,300 light-years away
💍 This ring is a shell of glowing gas puffed out by a dying star. The star ran out of fuel and gently blew off its outer layers.
⚡ Wow fact: In about 5 billion years, our Sun will do the same thing!
1
light-year across
Nebula
The Dumbbell Nebula
M27 — 1,360 light-years away
🏋️ M27 was the first planetary nebula ever discovered — in 1764! It's called a 'dumbbell' because of its shape, with two bright lobes spreading out.
⚡ Wow fact: Despite the name, it has nothing to do with planets — early astronomers just thought it looked a bit like one!
1764
year first discovered
Nebula
The Iris Nebula
NGC 7023 — 1,300 light-years away
🔵 The Iris Nebula glows blue because tiny dust particles in space reflect light from a hot star at its centre — like a cosmic mirror.
⚡ Wow fact: Blue light bounces off dust better than red — that's the same reason our sky is blue!
6
light-years wide
Nebula
The Orion Nebula
M42 — 1,344 light-years away
👶 A stellar nursery where thousands of new stars are forming. You can see it with your naked eye as the fuzzy 'star' in Orion's sword!
⚡ Wow fact: Over 700 stars in various stages of formation have been found here.
700+
newborn stars inside
Star Cluster
A Globular Star Cluster
Hundreds of thousands of stars
⭐ This is a globular cluster — a giant ball of stars all held together by gravity. They orbit around the outside of our galaxy like bees around a hive.
⚡ Wow fact: Some stars in globular clusters are almost as old as the universe — about 13 billion years old!
100,000+
stars in one cluster
Planet
Saturn
Photographed from Praslin, Seychelles
🪐 Saturn is a gas giant — it has no solid surface to stand on! Its famous rings are made of billions of chunks of ice and rock.
⚡ Wow fact: Saturn is so light for its size that it would actually FLOAT in water!
764
Earths could fit inside
Moon
Our Moon — Full Moon
384,400 km away
🌕 The Moon's surface is covered in craters made by space rocks crashing into it billions of years ago. There's no wind or rain to wear the craters away!
⚡ Wow fact: The dark patches are called 'seas' (maria) — early astronomers thought they were oceans. They're actually ancient lava flows!
384,400 km
from Earth
Moon
Our Moon — Gibbous Phase
The shadow line is called the terminator
🌗 At the terminator line (the shadow edge) you can see craters in amazing 3D — the long shadows make the mountains and craters really stand out!
⚡ Wow fact: The Moon doesn't make its own light — it's just reflecting sunlight, like a giant mirror in space.
400,000×
dimmer than the Sun
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