For images beyond our solar system—beyond the range of probes—we have telescopes. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low orbit in 1990, and it reaches beyond human imagination, bringing us mind-bending images of neighboring galaxies that look like the glittering eyes of storms, or nebulae thousands of light-years away. Its most famous image pictures the latter: Pillars of Creation, photographed in 1995 and again in 2015, shows a towering formation of interstellar dust in the Eagle Nebula, some 7,000 light-years from our planet. Telescope gazing may be the closest we ever get to time travel.

As this story is being written, the Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope—a collaborative endeavor from NASA, the CSA, and ESA—is being built and is slated to launch in 2021; NASA is in the stages of researching habitable 3D-printed homes for people who will touch down on Mars; and Voyager 1 and 2 soldier on. Both spacecrafts reached interstellar space in 2012 and 2018, respectively, making them the only man-made objects to ever leave the heliosphere, though their cameras have long been discontinued. It’s uncertain when, or if, humans will ever be able to join them, but if that time comes, those first explorers will certainly have cameras in tow.