Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson takes viewers up from the oceans of Earth, out past the sun and into the vast beyond of what we call space, all as a part of Sunday's inaugural episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.
Cosmos is filled with extraordinary photos of the universe and tales of missions to explore it. To coincide with the show's launch, NASA released a slew of their own amazing images of missions or phenomena that are mentioned on the show, the best of which we've compiled below.
In one hour: Join us as #Cosmos premieres. We'll be sharing more about our images & missions that appear on the show. Follow along.
— NASA (@NASA) March 9, 2014
Tyson's show is version 2.0 of the documentary series that astronomer Carl Sagan originally hosted in 1980, and it's meant to educate viewers about the universe and inspire anyone who has ever thought about what's out there beyond our Earth. But just as it's meant to inspire, the program also attempts to convey the importance of science in our daily lives.
See also: 25 Awe-Inspiring Images of the Milky Way Galaxy
Tyson, who has appeared on programs such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, is the Frederick P. Rose director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York, N.Y. Seth MacFarlane, a self-professed space geek who is the creator of Family Guy, is an executive producer of the new Cosmos. The show will run for 13 episodes on Fox, on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET.
"We are all made of star stuff," Tyson intones, quoting Sagan, in episode one of the series. Lucky us.
An ultraviolet photo of the Andromeda Galaxy.
The remnants of a supernova explosion float through space.
Titan, Saturn's orange moon, hovers behind the planet's rings.
Solar material bursts from the Sun.
A map displaying Earth and a few of its neighbors.
Turns out Saturn has auroras, too.
This is an artist's depiction of a flare that exploded from a red dwarf star.
Earth's closest neighbor, the moon.
The Horsehead Nebula in infrared light.
Saturn, half exposed.
The Cat's Eye Nebula was one of the first nebulas to be discovered.
Jupiter's red spot, which is actually a hurricane three times the size of Earth.
This picture is a collection of visible radio and X-ray data that show the remnants of another supernova.
A trail of gas floats through space, part of the remains of a giant star.
A snapshot of Jupiter's largest moon.
Visible data and infrared images combine to provide this photo of the Ring Nebula.
The mother planet.
A dying star is covered by icy hailstones.
A snapshot of the Lagoon Nebula.
Dust clouds obscure the galaxy Centaurus A.
An aurora, seen from Yukkon, Canada.
An aurora, seen from space.
The veiny, icy surface of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.
A computer-generated view of Mars at daybreak.
Cygnus X is a region of space with many massive stars.
The binary star system Eta Carinae.
An image of the Egg Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Just a small chunk of the Carina Nebula.
A computer-generated image of a black hole swallowing cosmic gas.
The dwarf galaxy NGC 4214, full of new stars.
A crater on Mercury in the shape of Mickey Mouse.
The merger of the Milky Way and nearby Andromeda Galaxy, which is predicted to happen in the next several billion years.
Find "the Pale Blue Dot." This photo was acquired on Feb. 14, 1990 when NASA’s Voyager 1 snapped it from four billion miles away. Voyager 1 has traveled farther than any other spacecraft, and was launched on Sept. 5, 1977.
Lights from the closest supernova explosion in 400 years.
A false color view of Mercury.
A false color image of storms on Saturn's north pole.
Hot blue gas at the center of a nebula.
This frisbee disc of stars is the spiral galaxy NGC 2841.
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