Four decades ago, researchers imagined the self-sufficient, Earth-orbiting spacecrafts of our future

Photo by Eric Coles.

Straight outta sci-fi: these beauty shots from all over space offer a startling, spectacular look into the cosmos. Watch the universe at work, from our own lonely planet to the deepest image of the Orion Nebula ever captured.

A view of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System, in an artist's impression.

Today is my birthday and of course a super moon is the right thing for such a day :-) The Moon has not been this close to Earth since 1948.

Some of the winning images from this year's competition.

Open cluster in Gemini

Start. 37 seconds of flight. KaBOOM! 10 years and 7 billion dollars are turning into dust. Four satellites, 2,600 lb, of the Cluster scientific program (study of the solar radiation and Earth's magnetic field interaction) and a heavy-lift launch vehicle Ariane 5 turned into "confetti" June 4, 1996. The programmers were to blame for everything. The previous model-rocket Ariane 4 has been successfully launched more than 100 times. What could go wrong? Apparently, to conquer space, one should know Ada language well.tart

Welcome to the dark side of the universe. In a direct contrast with the beautifully bright Milky Way galaxy, a "dark twin" called Dragonfly 44 has been discovered 300 million light-years away in the Coma constellation, according to a new study. But don't cue "Star Wars' " Imperial March theme music or Darth Vader breathing just yet (even if the closeup image looks like a slightly creepy emoji). Although it's massive and mysterious, Dragonfly 44 is really just misunderstood.

Official description: Curiosity approaching Murray Buttes locality on Sol 1421.

NASA's Galileo spacecraft acquired its highest resolution images of Jupiter's moon Io on 3 July 1999 during its closest pass to Io since orbit insertion in late 1995. This color mosaic uses the near-infrared, green and violet filters (slightly more than the visible range) of the spacecraft's camera and approximates what the human eye would see. Most of Io's surface has pastel colors, punctuated by black, brown, green, orange, and red units near the active volcanic centers.

Open cluster in Perseus

Located in the costellation Triangulum

ET-94, which is as tall as a 15-story building, is on a 16-mile trek through Los Angeles on its way to the California Science Center. It's set to be displayed with the space shuttle Endeavor.

An active volcanic eruption on Jupiter's moon Io was captured in this false color image taken on February 22, 2000 by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. White and orange areas on the left side of the picture show newly erupted hot lava. The two small bright spots are sites where molten rock is exposed to the surface at the toes of lava flows. The larger orange and yellow ribbon is a cooling lava flow that is more than more than 60 kilometers (37 miles) long.

Elliptical galaxy in Andromeda

Bubble nebula - All these pictures are stunningly beautiful and interesting af in my opinion. Not only do they make amazing wallpapers or are nice to look at for a few seconds but it amazes me what interesting stories are behind all of these pictures, its worth looking these pictures up and just get surprised at what you're actually looking at.

Now you can experience what it's like to travel to the center of the galaxy in a video that NASA created from images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Sb type galaxy in the constellation Andromeda