Some of these look like illustrations done by adolescent sci-fi/anime nerds. Totally unreal. A selection from National Geographic's best space pictures of 2010:
An airplane is silhouetted against the first solar eclipse of the decade, seen over Bangkok, Thailand, in January.
A colorful, craggy column of dust and gas dubbed the Mystic Mountain taken from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Mars shines like a bright red star over a "moonbow" in fog surrounding Hawaii's Haleakala volcano in January.
Patches of southern Australia's shallow Lake Eyre seem to form a grimacing face in an August 2006 satellite picture.
Asteroid 21 Lutetia is exposed, craters and all, in a picture captured in July by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft.
An aurora hovering over the southern Indian Ocean.
