This colorful image, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, celebrates the Earth-orbiting observatory’s 28th anniversary of viewing the heavens, giving us a window seat to the universe’s extraordinary stellar tapestry of birth and destruction. via NASA https://ift.tt/2vopVdE

The Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph, or CHESS 4, was successfully launched on a NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket at 12:47 p.m. EDT, April 16 (4:47 a.m. local, April 17) from the Kwajalein Atoll in The Republic of the Marshall Islands. via NASA https://ift.tt/2HG8gkj

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured this photo while flying over the western United States. The wide field of view stretches from the Sierra Nevada of California to the Columbia Plateau of Oregon and the Snake River Valley of Idaho. Lake Tahoe is nestled on the border of California and Nevada. via NASA https://ift.tt/2qCFhXg

The worlds orbiting other stars are called “exoplanets,” and they come in a wide variety of sizes, from gas giants larger than Jupiter to small, rocky planets about as big around as Earth or Mars. This rocky super-Earth is an illustration of the type of planets future telescopes, like NASA’s TESS, hope to find outside our solar system. via NASA https://ift.tt/2HAq6VW

Auroras are one of the many Earthly phenomena the crew of the International Space Station observe from their perch high above the planet. via NASA https://ift.tt/2EEdzxh

From March 20-23, 2018, the Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a series of images of our Sun and then ran together three sequences in three different extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. via NASA https://ift.tt/2Hbs8xK

Attendees talk with NASA staff at exhibit booths during Sneak Peek Friday at the USA Science and Engineering Festival, Friday, April 6, 2018. At the festival, NASA showcased the future of human space exploration – including the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System rocket. via NASA https://ift.tt/2Hcq20R

These graceful arcs are a cosmic phenomenon known as an Einstein ring – created as the light from distant galaxies warps around an extremely large mass, like a galaxy cluster. via NASA https://ift.tt/2JrIFMa

Gullies on Martian sand dunes, like these in Matara Crater, have been very active, with many flows in the last ten years. via NASA https://ift.tt/2GDsf1J

We honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered the famous “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech in Memphis, Tennessee fifty years ago, the day before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968. This image taken from the International Space Station shows a detailed view of the city of Memphis from low-Earth orbit. via NASA https://ift.tt/2q7bgyo