Flowers from the florist are popular for Mother's Day. But for really stellar mothers, here is a cosmic floral tribute with links to some dazzling astronomical images.

Mother's Day - an Astronomy Bouquet

A rose by any other name . . . could actually be a great nebula of glowing hydrogen gas like the Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237). It's 5000 light years away in the constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn).

Image: Adam Block & Tim Puckett

This very flowerlike object is the Ring Nebula (M57) in the constellation Lyra. It's a planetary nebula, formed as a dying sunlike star sloughs off its outer layers. The image reminds me a bit of a camelia.

Photo credit Ring Nebula: NASA, ESA, and C. R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University) and Robert Gendler

It's a floral-looking lunar crater just south of Mare Crisium in an image from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Although the ejecta looks remarkably like a flower, you don't usually get flowers a kilometer in diameter!

Seen in the red light emitted by energized hydrogen, some regions of the Sun may look flowery. The "petals" of the flower are fibrils, tubes of hot plasma, some of them Earth-sized.

Image Credit & Copyright: Big Bear Solar Obs., NJIT, Alan Friedman (Averted Imagination)

The Iris Nebula (NGC 7023) is a reflection nebula in the constellation Cepheus. The blue color of a reflection nebula is from dust grains reflecting starlight.

Image credit: Jimmy Walker

Here is a Hubble image of the Sunflower Galaxy (Messier 63), located about 27 million light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs). The arrangement of the spiral arms recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

The Tulip Nebula (Sh2-101) , juxtaposed with an actual tulip by J-P Metsävainio. It's an emission nebula 7000 light years away in the constellation of Cygnus.

It's a crater just south of Mare Crisium on the Moon, and the crater's eject looks remarkably like a flower. But, of course, you don't usually get flowers a kilometer in diameter!

The peony nebula star (WR 102ka) is located in the Peony nebula the reddish cloud of dust in and around the white circle, surrounding the star.

Image: Spitzer Space Telescope