Taken by a telescope onboard NASA's Swift satellite , this stunning vista represents the highest resolution image ever made of the Andromeda Galaxy (aka M31) - at ultraviolet wavelengths . The mosaic is composed of 330 individual images covering a region 200,000 light-years wide. It shows about 20,000 sources , dominated by hot, young stars and dense star clusters that radiate strongly in energetic ultraviolet light. Of course, the Andromeda Galaxy is the closest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way, at a distance of some 2.5 million light-years. To compare this gorgeous island universe's appearance in optical light with its ultraviolet portrait, just slide your cursor over the image.

The Tarantula Nebula is more than 1,000 light-years in diameter -- a giant star forming region within our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). That cosmic arachnid lies left of center in this sharp, colorful telescopic image taken through narrow-band filters . It covers a part of the LMC over 2,000 light-years across. Within the Tarantula ( NGC 2070 ), intense radiation, stellar winds and supernova shocks from the central young cluster of massive stars, cataloged as R136 , energize the nebular glow and shape the spidery filaments. Around the Tarantula are other violent star-forming regions with young star clusters, filaments and bubble-shaped clouds. The rich field is about as wide as the full Moon on the sky, located in the southern constellation Dorado .

NGC 6888, also known as the Crescent Nebula, is a cosmic bubble about 25 light-years across, blown by winds from its central, bright, massive star. This beautiful portrait of the nebula is from the Isaac Newton Telescope at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in the Canary Islands. It combines a composite color image with narrow band data that isolates light from hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the wind-blown nebula. The oxygen atoms produce the blue-green hue that seems to enshroud the detailed folds and filaments. NGC 6888's central star is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136). The star is shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind , ejecting the equivalent of the Sun's mass every 10,000 years. The nebula's complex structures are likely the result of this strong wind interacting with material ejected in an earlier phase. Burning fuel at a prodigious rate and near the end of its stellar life this star should ultimately go out with a bang in a spectacular supernova explosion. Found in the nebula rich constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is about 5,000 light-years away.

What is left over after stars collide? To help answer this question, astronomers have been studying the center of the most massive ball of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy . In the center of globular cluster Omega Centauri, stars are packed in 10,000 times more densely than near our Sun. Pictured above , the newly upgraded Hubble Space Telescope has resolved the very center of Omega Centauri into individual stars. Visible are many faint yellow-white stars that are smaller than our Sun , several yellow-orange stars that are Red Giants , and an occasional blue star . When two stars collide they likely either combine to form one more massive star, or they stick, forming a new binary star system. Close binary stars interact, sometimes emitting ultraviolet or X-ray light when gas falls from one star onto the surface of a compact companion such as a white dwarf or neutron star . Two such binaries have now been located in Omega Centauri 's center. The star cluster lies about 15,000 light-years away and is visible toward the constellation of Centaurus .

Is this picture worth a thousand words? According to the Holographic Principle , the most information you can get from this image is about 3 x 10 65 bits for a normal sized computer monitor. The Holographic Principle , yet unproven, states that there is a maximum amount of information content held by regions adjacent to any surface. Therefore, counter-intuitively , the information content inside a room depends not on the volume of the room but on the area of the bounding walls. The principle derives from the idea that the Planck length , the length scale where quantum mechanics begins to dominate classical gravity , is one side of an area that can hold only about one bit of information. The limit was first postulated by physicist Gerard 't Hooft in 1993. It can arise from generalizations from seemingly distant speculation that the information held by a black hole is determined not by its enclosed volume but by the surface area of its event horizon . The term "holographic" arises from a hologram analogy where three-dimension images are created by projecting light though a flat screen. Beware, other people looking at the above image may not claim to see 3 x 10 65 bits -- they might claim to see a teapot .

This serene view records a late summer night sky over the rolling, green hills of planet Earth. It was taken near the rural village of Saadat Shahr, Fars province, in southern Iran. Saadat Shahr is also known as Astronomy Town , as the inhabitants have demonstrated a remarakble passion for sky gazing . Fittingly, this Astronomy Town sky view finds a lovely part of the Milky Way near picture center. The three brightest stars are the stars of the Summer Triangle , Deneb in Cygnus (top), Altair in Aquila (left), and Vega in Lyra (right). The foreground landscape, illuminated by Astronomy Town lights, includes a kind of wild pistachio tree common in the region. To identify the stars and constellations, just slide your cursor over the image.

The first identified compact galaxy group, Stephan's Quintet is featured in this stunning image from the newly upgraded Hubble Space Telescope. About 300 million light-years away, only four galaxies of the group are actually locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters. The odd man out is easy to spot, though. The four interacting galaxies (NGC 7319, 7318A, 7318B, and 7317) have an overall yellowish cast and tend to have distorted loops and tails , grown under the influence of disruptive gravitational tides . But the bluish galaxy at the upper left (NGC 7320) is much closer than the others. A mere 40 million light-years distant, it isn't part of the interacting group. In fact, individual stars in the foreground galaxy can be seen in the sharp Hubble image, hinting that it is much closer than the others. Stephan's Quintet lies within the boundaries of the high flying constellation Pegasus .

The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects , and NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the central star of this particular planetary nebula is exceptionally hot though -- shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. Above is a dramatically detailed close-up of the dying star's nebula recorded by the newly upgraded Hubble Space Telescope . Cutting across a bright cavity of ionized gas, the dust torus surrounding the central star is in the upper right corner of this view, nearly edge-on to the line-of-sight. Molecular hydrogen has recently been detected in this hot star's dusty cosmic shroud. NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the arachnologically correct constellation Scorpius .

As the Earth spins on its axis, the sky seems to rotate around us. This motion, called diurnal motion , produces the beautiful concentric trails traced by stars during time exposures. Partial-circle star trails are pictured above over Grants Pass , Oregon , USA last month. Near the middle of the circles is the North Celestial Pole (NCP), easily identified as the point in the sky at the center of all the star trail arcs. The star Polaris , commonly known as the North Star , made the very short bright circle near the NCP. About 12,000 years ago, the bright star Vega was the North Star , and in about 14,000 years, as the Earth's spin axis slowly continues to precess , Vega will become the North Star again.

Two months ago, something unexpected hit Jupiter. First discovered by an amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley on 2009 July 19, the impact was quickly confirmed and even imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope the very next day. Many of the world's telescopes then zoomed in on our Solar System's largest planet to see the result. Some of these images have been complied into the above animation . Over the course of the last month and a half, the above time-lapse sequence shows the dark spot -- first created when Jupiter was struck -- deforming and dissipating as Jupiter 's clouds churned and Jupiter rotated . It is now thought that a small comet -- perhaps less than one kilometer across -- impacted Jupiter on or before 2009 July 19. Although initially expected to be visible for only a week, astronomers continue to track atmospheric remnants of the impact for new information about winds and currents in Jupiter's thick atmosphere .