Space has always been the last frontier. In ancient times, the stars and the moon and the Sun fascinated the humans below with their beauty and mystery. But there was little actual understanding for what really took place in the Universe so many wonderful stories were born in an attempt to do that. These stories and beliefs were passed down through time for generations upon generations of families and nationalities.

Today with the advance of scientific principles, photography and the actual exploration of space itself, we understand many of those previously unanswered questions. But one thing that has become so apparent from this understanding is that the beauty of the Universe is much more multifaceted than we had ever dreamed it could be. Below are some phenomenal photos taken by NASA and those at the International Space Station. They will take your breath away with their complexity and beauty.

The totally eclipsed moon shines amid the dense stars of our Milky Way galaxy in a stitched panorama picture taken in June from the Alborz Mountains of Iran. The eclipsed moon glows orange-red due to indirect light from the sun, which becomes reddish as it passes through Earth's atmosphere.

When a loop of plasma erupted from the sun in March, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft was there to capture the action.

The annual Orionid meteor shower peaked in activity in the early morning hours of October 22, as tiny remnants shed from Halley's comet plummeted through Earth's atmosphere. From dark locations, up to two dozen shooting stars an hour were visible during the peak.

A galaxy slightly smaller than our own Milky Way is getting its arm twisted, and a cosmic bully may be to blame.

Looking like a multihued jellyfish, the Betsiboka River in northwestern Madagascar flows into Bombetoka Bay, which in turn empties into the Mozambique Channel, as seen in a satellite picture released by the European Space Agency in August.

A dazzling green aurora frames the arc of the Milky Way over Jökulsárlón, the largest glacier lake in Iceland, in a picture taken in March. The image was a first-prize winner in the Second International Earth and Sky Photo Contest's "Beauty of the Night Sky" category.

A river of stars flows over the Mardi Khola Valley in the Himalaya, as seen in a long-exposure picture taken in Nepal and submitted to National Geographic's My Shot website in August.

Striped Supernova- In March astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory released a new picture of the celestial "pom-pom" known as the Tycho supernova remnant.