The Most Spectacular Space Photos Of 2016

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‘Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.’

— Edwin Hubble, The Nature of Science, 1954

The year of 2016 was full of new discoveries andimagery coming from our universe. There were new photos of Saturn’s rings displayed along with the surface of our own moon. This year people got a chance to have a closer and deeper look into the structure of one of the brightest galaxies and witness the most amazing views taken from multiple astronauts from the NASA, ESA and JAXA agencies. Here are the most spectacular images of this going away year:

This image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows Trumpler 14, a glittering star cluster that contains a collection of some of the brightest stars seen in our Milky Way galaxy, Jan. 21, 2016. — This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows Trumpler 14, a glittering star cluster that contains a collection of some of the brightest stars seen in our Milky Way galaxy, Jan. 21, 2016.

The full moon rises just before sunset, over western China, June 21, 2016.

This NASA photo obtained Dec. 14, 2016 shows an image taken by Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agencys Kounotori H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-6) as it approached the International Space Station on Dec. 12, 2016.

The Milky Way is observed behind a lookout tower near the Hungarian border village of Tachty, or Tajti in Hungarian, Slovakia, Aug. 28, 2016.

A maelstrom of glowing gas and dark dust within one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud, Sept. 5, 2016.

Election Day 2016 aboard the space station. Thanks to a bill passed by Texas legislators that put in place technical voting procedure for astronauts, they have the ability to vote from space through specially designed absentee ballots.

An all-sky view of stars in our Galaxy – the Milky Way – and neighboring galaxies, based on the first year of observations from ESA’s Gaia satellite, from July 2014 to Sept. 2015. Released Sept. 14, 2016.

Moonrise on the International Space Station, taken by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins.

The 2,980-mile-wide Cassini Division in Saturn’s rings on the sunlit side of the rings from about 4 degrees above the ring plane, Jan. 28, 2016.

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, released all of the data from its Kayuga spacecraft in Oct. 2016 showing images of the Earth captured from the moons surface.