wonderful images of universe taken by NASA's Spitzer Telescope

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This image made available by NASA shows the Cat's Paw Nebula inside the Milky Way Galaxy located in the constellation Scorpius, captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Its distance from Earth is estimated to be between 1.3 kiloparsecs (about 4,200 light-years) to 1.7 kiloparsecs (about 5,500 light-years). The bright, cloudlike band running left to right across the image shows the presence of gas and dust that can collapse to form new stars. The black filaments running through the nebula are particularly dense regions of gas and dust. The entire star-forming region is thought to be between 24 and 27 parsecs (80-90 light-years) across.

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This combination of photos made available by NASA shows the spiral galaxy Messier 81 (M81) viewed in two different types of infrared wavelengths showing the light from the stars in the galaxy and the distribution of dust particles without starlight, captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The dust particles are composed of silicates (chemically similar to beach sand), carbonaceous grains and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and trace the gas distribution in the galaxy.

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This image made available by NASA shows infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) in an area known as the W3 and W5 star-forming regions within the Milky Way Galaxy. The stringy, seaweed-like filaments are the blown-out remnants of a star that exploded in a supernova. The billowy clouds seen in pink are sites of massive star formation. Clusters of massive stars can be seen lighting up the clouds, and a bubble carved out from massive stars is seen near the bottom

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This composite image made available by NASA shows the cluster NGC 2024, which is found in the center of the Flame Nebula about 1,400 light-years from Earth. Stars are often born in clusters or groups, in giant clouds of gas and dust. Data was collected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope.

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This image made available by NASA shows the Perseus Molecular Cloud, a collection of gas and dust over 500 light-years across, hosting an abundance of young stars, captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope.

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This composite image made available by NASA shows the galaxy NGC 4258, also known as M106, about 23 million light-years away from Earth. Two extra spiral arms glow in X-ray, optical, and radio light. These anomalous arms are not aligned with the plane of the galaxy. The data was captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the National Science Foundation's Karl Jansky Very Large Array, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. 

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This image made available by NASA shows an active stellar nursery containing thousands of young stars and developing protostars, near the sword of the constellation Orion, captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope. 

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This composite image made available by NASA shows the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light as seen by the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. In the instruments' combined data, this nearby dwarf galaxy has giant ripples of dust spanning tens or hundreds of light-years.

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This image made available by NASA shows fledgeling stars hidden in the gas and clouds of the Orion nebula, captured by infrared observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Herschel mission. In several hundred thousand years, some of the forming stars will accrete enough material to trigger nuclear fusion at their cores.

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This composite image made available by NASA shows a neutron star left behind by the explosion from the original star's death in the constellation Taurus, observed on Earth as the supernova of A.D. 1054. This image uses data from three of NASA's observatories: the Chandra X-ray image is shown in blue, the Hubble Space Telescope optical image is in red and yellow, and the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared image is in purple. After nearly two decades in Earth orbit, scanning the universe with infrared eyes, ground controllers plan to put the faltering Spitzer Space Telescope into permanent hibernation. 

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