NASA's stunning Instagram photos: A sneak peek into the universe

The Instagram bug has bitten NASA. The United States space agency joined the Facebook-owned photo- and video-sharing social media network on Friday and already has over 1.15 lakh followers.

"We're constantly looking to expand our social media portfolio to include tools that will best tell NASA's story of exploration and discovery," said NASA Press Secretary Lauren Worley.

"Instagram has a passionate following of users who are hungry for new and exciting photos. We believe we have some of the most engaging images on and off the planet -- and we can't wait to engage with Instagrammers," said Worley.

"Aeronautics, astrophysics, Earth science, human spaceflight and more, the NASA account will provide a comprehensive view of the agency by sharing new and historic images and videos," the space agency said on its website.

Using Instagram, NASA posted some out-of-the-world images. Here’s a look…

This image shows the bright light of a solar flare on the left side of the sun and an eruption of solar material shooting through the sun’s atmosphere, called a prominence eruption.

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NASA’s Hubble space telescope catches a spiral lying more than 110 million light-years away from earth in the constellation of Antlia.

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The lunar far side as never seen before. This is a detailed picture of the moon and its pork-marked face.

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The image shows the Earth on September 7 as seen by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites satellite. Geostationary describes an orbit in which a satellite is always in the same position with respect to the rotating earth.

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Photographed by NASA's Expedition 28 crew aboard the International Space Station, this image shows the moon at center with the limb of Earth near the bottom transitioning into the orange-colored troposphere, the lowest and most dense portion of the Earth's atmosphere.

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The huge storm churning through the atmosphere in Saturn's northern hemisphere overtakes itself as it encircles the planet in this true-color view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

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In this rare image, the wide-angle camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn's rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame.

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Hubble astronomers have found an unexpected surprise while surveying more than 100 planetary nebulae in the central bulge of the Milky Way galaxy.

Those nebulae that are butterfly-shaped or hourglass-shaped tend to be mysteriously aligned such that their rotation axis is perpendicular to the plane of our galaxy.

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This light-year-long knot of interstellar gas and dust resembles a caterpillar. Harsh winds from extremely bright stars are blasting ultraviolet radiation at this "wanna-be" star and sculpting the gas and dust into its long shape.

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NASA-funded lunar research has yielded evidence of water locked in mineral grains on the surface of the moon from an unknown source deep beneath the surface.

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This striking NASA Hubble space telescope image shows what looks like the profile of a celestial bird is a close encounter between galaxies.

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NASA's Landsat satellite captures the Aral Sea in central Asia.

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The sun is about to come up over the South Pacific Ocean in this colorful scene photographed by one of the Expedition 35 crew members.

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In this dramatic scene, an unnamed crater in Mercury's northern volcanic plains is bathed in darkness as the sun sits low on the horizon.

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Red and white vapour clouds filled the skies over the Marshall Islands in the northern Pacific Ocean as part of NASA’s Equatorial Vortex Experiment.

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