Nebulae
The perhaps most beautiful things seen in the universe are the nebulae. Nebulae are huge gas-clouds lit up by surrounding stars. Above you see two of the most famous, the crab nebula (1) and the orion nebula (2).
Meteors
Meteors are dust particles from space that enter the earth´s atmosphere and burn up. Many of the meteors are particles from comets, because comets leave a trace of dust particles behind when it circles the sun. When the earth passes through a trace like this, there´ll be many meteors in the sky. One such period is 12 August every year.
The Milky Way
Our galaxy, the milky way is a pretty common type of galaxy in the universe. It has a radius of approxiametely 50'000 light years, and our solar system is about 30'000 ly:s from the nuclues. It takes our sun 220 million years to make one lap. The picture above shows what we can see of The Milky Way, the billions of stars..
Links
Most pictures taken from
Microsoft
Encarta 95.
Stockholm´s observatorium in Saltsjöbaden (Swedish)
Life on Mars?
The Bradford Robotic Telescope Observatory site
Space Station Mir
Planetary Society