Valentine's Day. Is it a romantic day or one invented by greeting card companies and sellers of luxury goods? It certainly isn't an astronomical holiday, but whatever your view of the day, you can enjoy this selection of cosmic valentines.

Astronomical Valentines

Here is one of the cosmic valentines from my Astronomy Pinterest board. It shows the Sun ejecting a lot of particles in a coronal mass ejection - in the shape of a heart! If they come our way, they can create beautiful northern lights. The white circle shows where the Sun is, since it has to be safely masked for the satellite to image it.

Astronomy Valentines

How would you make this heart on the Milky Way?



Julien Girard did it with a little flashlight during a 25-second exposure of the Milky Way at the Paranal observatory in Chile.

I love it!

This cute little heart is actually 120 m (395 ft) wide. It's a mesa on a crater floor in the Martian southern hemisphere.



More cosmic hearts at Astronomy Valentines