Stargazing: Photographs of the Night Sky from the Archives of NASA is a new book by Nirmala Nataraj that showcases a wealth of images from the NASA archives, from rockets racing across the sky to views of nebulae, distant galaxies and aurora glowing above Earth as seen from the International Space Station.
We've put together a gallery of some of the most awe-inspiring and beautiful images published in the book, illustrating the range of NASA's missions to explore the cosmos.
The Rosette Nebula, as seen by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer
telescope.
A Hubble Space Telescope image showing a galaxy NGC 7250. The bright object in the foreground is star TYC 3203-450-1.
The Carina Nebula, located 7,500 lightyears away, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.
A young star cluster, as seen by NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes.
A view of the Crab Nebula captured by the VLA (radio) in red; Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared) in yellow; Hubble Space Telescope (visible) in green; XMM-Newton (ultraviolet) in blue; and Chandra X-ray Observatory (X-ray) in purple.
Aurora appears above Earth, photographed from the vantage point of the International Space Station.
The full Moon seen to the right of the Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket, with the Cygnus spacecraft onboard, Saturday, July 12, 2014, launch Pad-0A, NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
The aurora appears over Moscow, imaged by astronauts on board the International Space Station.
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer detects dust in the Andromeda galaxy's spiral arms.