Pillars of Ashoka

The pillars of Ashoka are a collection of pillars dispersed throughout the Indian subcontinent, during Emperor Ashoka's reign of the Mauryan Empire.

The Emperor had inscriptions carved into the pillars, containing information about the Emperor's beliefs and ideas towards the teachings and philosophies of Buddhism. The pillars stand roughly 15 meters in height and weigh about 50 tons each. These pillars where then sent to areas like Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The pillar shown in the image is believed to be one of 30 sandstone pillars inscribed with a Buddhists based moral code. The four lion pillar was constructed by Emperor Ashoka. The lion figure has since become the Republic of India's modern national emblem.

VY Canis Majoris.

VY Canis Majoris can be seen as the brightest star in the image above.

The Hypergiant VY Canis Majoris lies roughly 4,500 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Canis Major. It is one of the largest stars currently known within the Milky Way Galaxy, 1,700 times bigger than our Sun. Hypergiants are some of the biggest and most luminous stars in our known Universe, but only last for a few million years. Hypergaints like VY Canis Majoris are extremely rare stars to locate within our Galaxy. The first person to discover VY Canis Majoris was a French astronomer named Joseph Jerome Francois de Lalande in 1801.

The image above was captured at the Rutherford Observatory in Columbia University, New York, United States.

Link to image of VY Canis Majoris, captured at the Rutherford Observatory.

Mystic Mountain

The Mystic Mountain is vast area located roughly, 7,700 light years away from Earth in the Carina Nebula. The mountain is a stellar nursery, home to newly born stars, reaching a peak of around 3 light years (17,670,000,000 000 miles) in height. The stars surrounding and forming within the cloud, gives of huge amounts of heat and radiation, which ionizes the surrounding gases, causing them to glow. The image above was captured by Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope.