BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Cosmic Hearts for Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is coming up soon, and here is my take on Astronomical Valentines. Although Valentine's Day is actually a non-astronomical holiday, I've included links to some cosmic hearts. And here's a space-based valentine from someone who shares my love of chocolate. It's a chocolate vision of the 2011 Valentine's Day rendezvous between Comet Tempel 1 and the NASA Stardust-NExT mission. And I guess it's also the diet version – just an artist's concept, no actual chocolate was involved.

This heart isn't an astronomy picture, but it was taken from space. It's part of the Aral Sea.

NASA's Dawn mission is currently closing in on the dwarf planet Ceres, the next port of call. Dawn has already visited the asteroid Vesta and here is a heart that Dawn imaged on Vesta.

In this Hubble Space Telescope picture the Antennae Galaxies seem to form a colorful heart.

Here are some heart-shaped clouds seen from the International Space Station. Astronaut Karen Nyberg took the picture.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has a selection of Valentine postcards including all sorts of heart shapes. There are satellite images and astronomical ones.