NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team

Often found in regions of space where new stars are forming, emission nebulae are hot, glowing clouds of gas.

NASA/ESA/Jesús Maíz Apellániz/Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía/Davide De Martin/Hubble

An open cluster is a group of stars — often a few hundred or thousand — that are held together by mutual gravitation.

NASA/ESA/Hubble SM4 ERO Team

More formally known as cold molecular pillars, an elephant trunk is a term used to describe formations of interstellar matter in space. Interstellar matter is mostly made of gas and dust.

NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team

In simplest terms, a supernova is a bright, powerful explosion of a dying massive star.

NASA/CXC/SAO/STScI

A planetary nebula is an expanding, ring-shaped cloud of gas that forms around an aging star. Several billion years from now, the Sun will experience this phase of stellar evolution.

NASA/ESA/Hubble SM4 ERO Team

With an estimated temperature of about 250,000 degrees Celsius, the dying star at the center of this nebula used to be five times the mass of the Sun.

SEE ALSO:These photos show what life in space is really like — and it looks like a ton of fun

Lucy Yang is an editorial intern on the INSIDER team covering tech, gadgets, and design.

Previously, she was a freelance editorial account manager at Prose Media, a content marketing agency. Before that, she was a content & research intern at Partnered, a B2B tech startup.

She graduated from Northwestern University in 2016 with a double major in Creative Writing (Nonfiction) and Psychology.