Gorgeous spiral galaxy M33 seems to have more than its fair share of bright emission nebulae. In fact, narrow-band and broad-band image data are combined in this beautifully detailed composite to trace the reddish emission nebulae, star forming HII regions , sprawling along loose spiral arms that wind toward the galaxy's core. Historically of great interest to astronomers, M33's giant HII regions are some of the largest known stellar nurseries - sites of the formation of short-lived but very massive stars . Intense ultraviolet radiation from the luminous, massive stars ionizes the surrounding gas and ultimately produces the characteristic red glow. Spanning over 50,000 light-years and a prominent member of the local group of galaxies , M33 is also known as the Triangulum Galaxy . It lies about 3 million light-years distant.

With a 3.5 meter diameter mirror, larger than the Hubble Space Telescope, Herschel is ESA's new infrared observatory . The space-based telescope is named for German-born British astronomer Frederick William Herschel who discovered infrared light over 200 years ago. In initial tests, Herschel's cameras have combined to deliver this spectacular view along the plane of the Milky Way in the constellation of the Southern Cross . Spanning some 2 degrees the premier, false-color, far-infrared view captures our galaxy's cold dust clouds in extreme detail, showing a remarkable, connected maze of filaments and star-forming regions . These and planned future Herschel observations are intended to unravel mysteries of star formation by surveying broad areas of the galactic plane .

The brilliant fireball meteor captured in this snapshot was a startling visitor to Tuesday evening's twilight skies over the city of Groningen. In fact, sightings of the meteor , as bright as the Full Moon, were widely reported throughout the Netherlands and Germany at approximately 17:00 UT. Accompanied by sonic booms and rumbling sounds, the meteor was seen to break up into bright fragments, eventually leaving a persistent smoke-like trail . Even though there are bright fireball meteors in planet Earth's atmosphere every day, sightings of them are relatively rare because they more often occur over oceans and uninhabited areas.

Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city . Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45 , the Pleiades is one of the brightest and closest open clusters . Hurtling through a cosmic dust cloud a mere 400 light-years away, the Pleiades or Seven Sisters star cluster is well-known for its striking blue reflection nebulae . This remarkable wide-field (3 degree) image of the region shows the famous star cluster near the center, while highlighting lesser known dusty reflection nebulas nearby, across an area that would span over 20 light-years . In this case, the sister stars and cosmic dust clouds are not related, they just happen to be passing through the same region of space.

What has created a large dust ring around Saturn? At over 200 times the radius of Saturn and over 50 times the radius of Saturn's expansive E ring , the newly discovered dust ring is the largest planetary ring yet imaged. The ring was found in infrared light by the Earth-orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope . A leading hypothesis for its origin is impact material ejected from Saturn's moon Phoebe , which orbits right through the dust ring 's middle. An additional possibility is that the dust ring supplies the mysterious material that coats part of Saturn's moon Iapetus , which orbits near the dust ring 's inner edge. Pictured above in the inset, part of the dust ring appears as false-color orange in front of numerous background stars.

Why were the statues on Easter Island built? No one is sure. What is sure is that over 800 large stone statues exist there. The Easter Island statues , stand, on the average, over twice as tall as a person and have over 200 times as much mass. Few specifics are known about the history or meaning of the unusual statues , but many believe that they were created about 500 years ago in the images of local leaders of a lost civilization. Pictured above , a large stone statue appears to ponder the distant Large Magellanic Cloud before a cloudy sky that features the bright stars Canopus and Sirius .

The painting Starry Night is one of the most famous icons of the night sky ever created. The scene was painted by Vincent van Gogh in southern France in 1889. The swirling style of Starry Night appears, to many, to make the night sky come alive . Although van Gogh frequently portrayed real setting s in his paintings, art historians do not agree on precisely what stars and planets are being depicted in Starry Night . The style of Starry Night is post-impressionism , a popular painting style at the end of the nineteenth century. The original Starry Night painting hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City , New York , USA .

This mid-infrared image was taken in the last minutes of the LCROSS flight mission to the Moon. The small white spot (enlarged in the insets) seen within the dark shadow of lunar crater walls is the initial flash created by the impact of a spent Centaur upper stage rocket. Traveling at 1.5 miles per second, the Centaur rocket hit the lunar surface yesterday at 4:31am UT, followed a few minutes later by the shepherding LCROSS spacecraft . Earthbound observatories have reported capturing both impacts. But before crashing into the lunar surface itself, the LCROSS spacecraft's instrumentation successfully recorded close-up the details of the rocket stage impact, the resulting crater, and debris cloud. In the coming weeks, data from the challenging mission will be used to search for signs of water in the lunar material blasted from the surface.

Lurking behind dust and stars near the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, IC 10 is a mere 2.3 million light-years distant. Its light dimmed by the intervening dust, the irregular dwarf galaxy still shows off vigorous star-forming regions that shine with a telltale reddish glow in this colorful skyscape . In fact, also a member of the Local Group of galaxies, IC 10 is the closest known starburst galaxy . Compared to other Local Group galaxies, IC 10 has a large population of newly formed stars that are massive and intrinsically very bright, including a luminous X-ray binary star system thought to contain a black hole . Located within the boundaries of the northern constellation Cassiopeia , IC 10 is about 5,000 light-years across.

About 100 kilometers from the Moon's South Pole, 100 kilometer wide crater Cabeus is the target for two LCROSS mission spacecraft on course to impact the Moon tomorrow. The shadowed crater is strongly foreshortened in this mosaic, a representative view of the region for earthbound telescopes. The impacts are intended to create billowing debris plumes extending into the sunlight above the crater walls, that could reveal signs of water . First to impact will be the mission's Centaur upper stage rocket at 11:30 UT (7:30am EDT). The instrumented LCROSS mothership will image the impact and then fly through the resulting debris plume analyzing the material blasted from the crater floor. Four minutes after the first impact, the LCROSS mothership itself will crash into Cabeus. The plumes are expected to be visible in telescopes about 10 inches in diameter or larger, with the timing favoring Moon watchers in western North America and the Pacific. NASA also plans to broadcast live footage from the LCROSS mission on NASA TV starting at 6:15am EDT / 3:15am PDT on October 9.