2020 in review: The top photos of the cosmos

Sand dunes and smaller structures of scalloped sand are seen in south Melas Chasma on Mars.

The swan-shaped Omega Nebula is seen in this composite image.

An illustration depicts high-altitude electrical storms on the dark side of Jupiter, in this image based on data from NASA's Juno mission.

An image shows the Sun's surface at the highest resolution ever taken, shot by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), the world's largest solar telescope, on the island of Maui, Hawaii.

Two types of sand dunes are seen on Mars in this image released January 16, 2020. The small dots are barchan dunes, which are upwind, and the long, linear tails are downwind.

The spiral galaxy NGC 5643 in the constellation of Lupus (The Wolf), about 60 million light-years away from Earth, is seen in this image captured over nine hours of observation time.

The comet NEOWISE streaks above Earth, in this image taken aboard the International Space Station.

Trails from dust devils are etched in dune fields in the southern latitudes of Mars.

Cloud streets, a type of cloud formation, stream over the sea near Baffin Island (left), with chunks of sea ice visible on the coast, and Greenland (right) in this false color satellite image.

The star-forming nebula W51 in the constellation Aquila, one of the largest "star factories" in the Milky Way galaxy, is surrounded by clouds of interstellar dust, in this image captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Sunlight reflects off the Mediterranean Sea near the islands of Corsica, France (bottom) and Sardinia, Italy (center) as seen from the International Space Station looking south.

The Blue Nile River is seen as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam reservoir fills near the Ethiopia-Sudan border, in this broad spectral image.

Cliffs of ancient ice are seen on the surface of Mars, featuring brown dusty cliff walls and light blue ice.

The Proton-M carrier rocket with the Briz-M booster, Ekspress-80 and Ekspress-103 Russian telecommunication satellites blasts off from the launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

A cosmic homicide in action, with a wayward star being shredded by the intense gravitational pull of a black hole that contains tens of thousands of solar masses, is imagined in an artist's impression.

Blooms of phytoplankton, which occur almost every year in late summer, are pushed by sea currents into swirling patterns in the Baltic Sea, off the coast of southeast Sweden.

People watch as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, topped with the Crew Dragon capsule, is launched carrying four astronauts on the first operational NASA commercial crew mission at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Churning atmospheric jets are seen in Jupiter's northern latitudes, taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft.

Blue meltwater spans an area of about 90 miles (140 kilometers) on the George VI ice shelf in Antarctica.

The galaxy cluster Abell 2744, with superheated gas glowing blue, is captured in this X-ray and optical image.

Date palms and olive trees grow in thousands of center-pivot irrigated fields in Al Jowf, Saudi Arabia, in this image captured on 14 different wavelengths.

A gully in the sand dunes of Matara Crater is seen on the surface of Mars, carved by seasonal dry ice that accumulates each year.

The moon's shadow passes over China during an annular eclipse, as seen from the International Space Station.

A crater is seen on the surface of Mars, in this image. The straight edge on the north rim of the crater could have been formed by a zone of joints or faults in the planet's crust that existed before the impact, or an uneven collapse of material that fell from the rim, according to scientists.

The Tarantula Nebula, including the starburst region of R136 where massive stars form (center left), is seen in this three-color infrared image captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Curling cloud patterns known as von Karman vortices are seen over Portugal's Madeira Island, north of the Canary Islands in the North Atlantic.

Cyclones at the north pole of Jupiter appear as swirls in this composite false color rendering from the NASA Juno mission, from data taken during close passes by the planet.

Dust carried by hot, dry berg winds streams out of the Namib Desert, stretching from Dorob National Park to the port town of Walvis Bay, Namibia, and over the South Atlantic Ocean.

Many colorful stars are packed close together in the globular cluster NGC 1805 in the Dorado constellation.

Sedimentary layers of sand are seen in southern Holden Crater on Mars.