Happy Valentine’s Day from space, all of you! This image shows 2 galaxies – cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 and sometimes referred to as the antennae galaxies – in the middle of a collision. Image via APOD.
Happy Valentine’s Day! We share the love by celebrating some of the many heart-shaped objects that you can find from far away in the depths of space to closer to our neighborhood in the solar system to here on Earth.
View bigger. Here is IC1805, also known as the Heart Nebula – a popular target for astrophotographers – via EarthSky community member Justin Ng.
The lunar calendars of 2021 are here. A few left. Order yours before they are gone!
We love Pluto too! The New Horizons mission, which flew closest to Pluto on July 13, 2015, revealed unique surface markers, including this light-colored region that follows a huge heart on the planet. Image via NASA / APL / SwRI.
Mars has a lot of heart! These 10 images of craters with distinctive heart shapes were taken by the Mars Global Surveyor between 2001 and 2004. Image via NASA / JPL / Malin Space Science Systems.
Let’s show a little love for this small heart-shaped depression in the lunar surface, photographed during the Apollo 12 extravehicular activity on November 19, 1969. The legs of astronaut Charles Conrad Jr. can be seen in the background. Image via NASA.
Back on Earth, we find this heart-shaped island in the Republic of Croatia that is only 50 meters wide. It’s Galesnjak, nicknamed Lover’s Island. This beautiful photo was taken by ALOS, the Japanese Earth observation satellite. Image via ESA.
This dark green lake is part of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan with a heart shape from which a thin stream of emerald green liquid appears to bleed. Perhaps his heart breaks because this shrinking sea is considered one of the world’s worst environmental disasters. Image via World Top Top.
Heart-shaped leaves are very common on Earth, and sometimes you can also find heart-shaped flowers, like this heart-shaped plant. Image via annie pm / Unsplash.
In short, the shape of hearts is ubiquitous in the universe, as seen in these photos from tiny petals on Earth to galaxies in the distant universe.
