What better way to end than with some examples of said beauty and utility? After all that reading, we'll leave you with a few glamour shots of our favorite nebula: Messier 16, better known as the ...

The lanes and clouds of dust in the star-forming Orion Nebula (M42) reveal a dark dimension to this familiar object.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image peers into the dusty recesses of the nearest massive star-forming region to Earth, ...