8 jaw-dropping images of galaxies shared by NASA

Galaxies are vast systems of stars, gas, dust, and dark matter held together by gravity. Our Milky Way galaxy is just one of billions of galaxies in the universe.

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” is captured in infrared light by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously invisible areas of star birth.

Galaxies come in various shapes and sizes, including spiral, elliptical, and irregular.

A festive portrait of our Milky Way galaxy shows a mishmash of gas, charged particles, and several types of dust.

In this stunning vista, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras penetrate much of the dust, revealing the stars of the crowded galactic center region.

NASA's SOFIA observed magnetic fields showing in this composite image of Centaurus A.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope assembled a comprehensive picture of the evolving universe – among the most colorful deep space images ever captured at the time.

Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, scientists discovered a gigantic, mysterious structure in our galaxy. This feature looks like a pair of bubbles extending above and below our galaxy's center.

In this main image, different bands of X-rays from Chandra (orange, green, purple) have been combined with radio data (gray).