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The year 2015 has been declared by the United Nations the International Year of Light (IYL). Light is essential for our existence and enhances our lives in many ways. Certainly astronomy wouldn't exist without it.

In celebration of IYL, NASA's Chandra X-ray Center is releasing astronomical images that combine data from different light wavelengths. (X-rays are a high-energy form of light.) Supernova remnant SNR 0519-69.0 is the remains of a cosmic explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC is a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. The image has used X-ray data which can show very energetic events, in this case, gas whose temperature is at millions of degrees. Data from the Hubble Space Telescope in visible light fills in the picture.

Gamma rays are even more energetic than X-rays. They are quite dangerous to living things because of the high energy. But it's also a form of light, and gamma ray telescopes can tell us a lot about high energy processes in the cosmos. Here is a map of the gamma ray sky.

We can't see gamma rays, so the data from NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope has to be translated into colors that we can see. The bright areas show where extremely high temperatures are producing gamma rays. Some are them from the after-effects of cosmic explosions. Others show where there are active supermassive black holes in other galaxies.

Amazing Pinterest Board Mona!

This colorful image shows part of the rings of Saturn. Scientists can use ultraviolet light reflected by the rings to see what materials are present. In the Cassini image, turquoise colors represent water ice and red shows dust. You can see that the outer rings are dominated by ice and the inner rings tends to be more dusty.

I think that this pattern would make a splendid textile. I can imagine the colorful stripes woven into a wall hanging or bedspread.

This is the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way. It's the most distant object visible with the unaided eye. If you can see it without an optical aid, you're seeing 2.2 million years into the past. (It takes light 2.2 million years to get here from M31.)

This picture is just a thumbnail compared to the full resolution image which is 3.5 gigabytes. Robert Gendler created it using data from four big telescopes and his own observations. Quite an accomplishment.