Astronauts on the shuttle Discovery spent Christmas in space. Their mission: to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, which takes crystal-clear pictures of the heavens from its orbit high above Earth. Now there's stunning proof that the Discovery mission was worth it: the Hubble's first photos since the repair were just released.
The Eskimo Nebula, so named because it looks like a face surrounded by a fuzzy parka, is really a giant ball of gas puffed out by a dying star. It began forming about 10,000 years ago. Some of the material that once made up the star is sweeping around it at 900,000 miles an hour! The galaxies below are similar to others the Hubble has snapped. Seeing so many galaxies so similar to our Milky Way always makes us wonder: Is anybody out there?