The most mind-blowing space and astronomy pictures of 2017

Solar Eclipse

Earth is a 7,917-mile-wide rock drifting through the vacuum of space — a fact that's shockingly easy to forget.

But every so often, a mind-boggling picture appears before our eyes and reminds us just how small, lucky, and plucky we are as human beings.

Some images take us on a billion-year journey back in time. Others bring the blue marble of our home planet into view. And from the ground, we can follow companies and governments on their quests to reach the stars.

The year 2017 brought some of the most astounding space and astronomy images to date. We've rounded up some of our favorites.

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The "rotten egg" nebula forecasts the sun's death

Some 5,000 light-years from Earth, the Calabash Nebula — also called OH 231.8+04.2, or the "rotten egg" nebula (since it contains a lot of sulphur) — shows what happens after a star like the sun dies. The yellow-colored gas is moving at more than 620,000 miles per hour.

This Hubble Space Telescope photo, taken this year, shows what our sun could look like in about 5 billion years, when it can no longer efficiently fuse fuel. At that point, it will partly collapse, blow its outer shells of plasmatic gas into space, turn into a white dwarf, and begin to form a planetary nebula in its surroundings.

The most detailed view of Earth ever taken

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration launched the GOES-16 satellite in November 2016, parking it in an orbit that helps it look down on the same face of Earth, day-in and day-out.

Before it was put to use helping scientists log and predict weather patterns on our planet, it had to undergo nearly a year of rigorous testing and verification.

This full view of Earth, taken by the satellite in January, is arguably one of the most detailed whole views of the planet. GOES-16 recently passed all of its tests, so NOAA now calls it GOES-East, and now it constantly uploads its images to the internet.

The space station was captured as it flew in front of the 2017 total solar eclipse

The International Space Station (ISS) is an ultimate target for adventurous photographers, since it orbits 250 miles above Earth while moving at 17,500 miles per hour. But with some very careful planning, the football-field-size laboratory can be caught on camera from the ground.

Months before the August 2017 total solar eclipse, a NASA photographer managed to put himself in the right place (which happened to be Banner, Wyoming) at the right time to capture the ISS zooming in front of the astronomical event.

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