A new exhibit at the Smithsonian showcases magisterial images of stars and planets light years away from our own

When Jonathan McDowell first got interested in space when he was a kid, growing up in the United States and England during the space race. "It's always been a bit of a philosophical thing for me," he said, "the questions of where do we come from, and the awe and majesty of the scales involved." Now, a few decades and one eponymous asteroid later, an exhibit he helped curate at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum is, he hopes, giving more people that same curiosity about the world that inspired his career as a scientist at the Smithsonian's Astrophysical Observatory.

The images from the exhibit, a few of which we've collected with their accompanying captions in the gallery below, showcase parts of our universe beyond our solar system. "I think people are familiar with Mars and Jupiter and the places in our solar system, but that they don't often get to see photographs of the places beyond it," he explained. "What I hope people will come away with is a bit more of a sense of scale in the universe, and the idea that you have the planets in our solar system going around our sun, and then you have the idea of our sun as one of many stars in our galaxy, and then our galaxy as one of many galaxies in our universe."