ALT This X-ray image of the supernova remnant G306.3-0.9 features a very small, bright purple object in the center of a dark and starry sky. The purple nebula has some bits of red and blue peeking through. It has a cartoon-like fish shape, poised as if swimming down into the water. It stands out from the surrounding stars due to its colors, brightness and contrast against the darker background. The image is roughly 20 arcminutes across, which corresponds to 150 light-years at the remnant's estimated distance of about 26,000 light-years.

ALT A composite image of a remarkable radio wave formation that strongly resembles a treble clef musical symbol, hovering in the midst of two colliding galaxy clusters. Here, galaxies in the galaxy clusters, plus foreground and background stars and galaxies, blanket the image with specks of light set against the blackness of space. At the center of the frame is a large, oval, blue-purple cloud with ragged edges. In the middle of the purple field, tilting slightly to our left, is what appears to be a giant treble clef, loosely drawn with a neon pink marker. Like the musical notation for which it's named, the formation has a strong vertical stroke with a continuous, fluid line swooping back and forth as it moves from top to bottom.

ALT A composite image of a spiral galaxy, M101; one of six identified galaxies housing a new class of mysterious objects that give off unusually low-energy X-rays. In this image, M101 faces us directly. It has multiple arms in shades of purple, spiraling clockwise around a golden yellow core. Scattered along and between the arms are scores of tiny specks in white and purple. Most of those specks are pairs of stars, but seven of them are a mystery. To casual observers, the unusual objects are visually indistinguishable from the other specks of light in the galaxy. The curious objects give off X-rays of such low energy, they in fact produce large amounts of ultraviolet radiation, as UV radiation borders X-rays on the electromagnetic spectrum. Searching images of galaxies with low-energy X-rays in the Chandra Observatory archive, scientists have found a total of 84 such objects spread across M101 and five other galaxies. They have dubbed these mysterious objects "hypersoft X-ray sources."

ALT NGC 1569, a compact dwarf irregular galaxy undergoing a violent, compact burst of star formation. Chandra and XMM-Newton observations (blue and purple) reveal massive bubbles of million-degree gas inflated by stellar winds, set against a backdrop of optical light (magenta, orange and white) imaged by Adam Block. Dwarf starburst galaxies can serve as local laboratories for studying the conditions of the early universe, where small, primitive galaxies formed stars at frantic rates. Overall, NGC 1569 resembles a tangle of glowing red yarn surrounding a white sparkler.

ALT This is a multiwavelength image of galaxy NGC 1672. At its center are two thick, spiraling, dark purple arms that bridge a brilliant white and neon pink core. Those bridging arms create a bar, which channels gas to the core, making NGC 1672 a barred spiral galaxy, like our own Milky Way. Longer, wispier arms also spiral out from the core, dotted with gleaming white and pink stars.

ALT Three images of the Tarantula Nebula, each representing a different wavelength of light, presented in a different color. When layered atop one another, like sheets of colored cellophane, they combine to produce a vibrant and informative singular image. The base layer features a blanket of wispy blue clouds against a black backdrop. These clouds represent hot gas observed by Chandra. The second layer cuts diagonally across the cloudy blue square, tilted from our upper left down toward our lower right. This red layer represents infrared data collected by Webb. The third layer is a diamond-shaped image, with its points touching the edges of the big blue base layer. This green layer represents data captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In the center of the combined image, the three translucent layers overlap, resulting in an image of intermingled blue, red, and green clouds that blend to include lively shades of fiery orange, golden yellow, and deep purple.