The art of space: Imagining the unknown regions of our universe

In this artist’s conception of a supermassive black hole in galaxy M87, the black hole’s massive jet is seen rising up from the center of the black hole. The observations on which this illustration is based represent the first time that the jet and the black hole shadow have been imaged together, giving scientists new insights into how black holes can launch these powerful jets.

An artist's depiction shows the possible surface of TRAPPIST-1f, a planet in the TRAPPIST-1 system.

The planet Kepler-16b with its two stars. The cold planet, with its gaseous surface, is not thought to be habitable. The largest of the two stars, a K dwarf, is about 69 percent the mass of our sun, and the smallest, a red dwarf, is about 20 percent the sun's mass.

A fledgling solar system containing deep within it enough water vapor to fill all the oceans on Earth five times, located in our Milky Way galaxy about 1,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Perseus.

An artist's rendering depicts a solar storm hitting Mars and stripping ions from the planet's upper atmosphere. Scientists documented a solar storm blasting away Mars’ atmosphere, an important clue in a long-standing mystery of how a planet that was once like Earth turned into a cold, dry desert.

A sunset seen from the super-Earth Gliese 667 Cc. Astronomers have estimated there are tens of billions of such rocky worlds orbiting faint red dwarf stars in the Milky Way alone.

An artist's concept depicts select planetary discoveries made so far by NASA's Kepler space telescope. Astronomers have discovered 1,284 more planets beyond our solar system, with nine possibly in orbits suitable for surface water that could bolster the prospects of supporting life.

Markarian 231, a binary black hole found in the center of the nearest quasar host galaxy to Earth. Like a pair of whirling skaters, the black-hole duo generates tremendous amounts of energy that makes the core of the host galaxy outshine the glow of the galaxy's population of billions of stars.

A view of the surface of the planet Proxima orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System.

An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile.

: A supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun is seen in an undated NASA artist's concept illustration.

The planet Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone, which is a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet's surface. The discovery is the closest scientists have come so far to finding a true Earth twin. The star, known as Kepler-186 and located about 500 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, is smaller and redder than the sun.