--- title: Valentine's Day: Spot 9 Cosmic Valentines From Space description: From a small heart-shaped island in Croatia to a mesa on the surface of Mars canonical: https://time.com/4218328/hearts-from-space/ author: TIME Photo article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-02-12T14:44:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:00:25.544Z article:section: Science og:title: Spot 9 Cosmic Valentines From Space og:description: From a small heart-shaped island in Croatia to a mesa on the surface of Mars og:url: https://time.com/4218328/hearts-from-space/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf21e2bd4f1e9bfc0/69887d52196cf4d61903a4c6/time-valentines-day-hearts-in-space-pluto.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: New Horizons Nears July 14 Flyby Of Pluto og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Spot 9 Cosmic Valentines From Space twitter:description: From a small heart-shaped island in Croatia to a mesa on the surface of Mars twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf21e2bd4f1e9bfc0/69887d52196cf4d61903a4c6/time-valentines-day-hearts-in-space-pluto.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Spot 9 Cosmic Valentines From Space by [TIME Photo](/author/time-photo/) ## TIME Photo Feb 12, 2016 2:44 PM CUT  An image of Pluto taken from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 13, 2015. An image of Pluto taken from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 13, 2015.NASA//APL/SwRI/Getty Images by [TIME Photo](/author/time-photo/) ## TIME Photo Feb 12, 2016 2:44 PM CUT  An image of Pluto taken from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 13, 2015. NASA//APL/SwRI/Getty Images  The small heart-shaped island of Galešnjak, Croatia, acquired by ALOS – Japan's four-tonne Earth observation satellite and released on Feb. 11, 2011. JAXA/ESA  A sharp cosmic portrait features glowing gas and obscuring dust clouds in IC 1795, a star forming region in the northern constellation Cassiopeia. The nebula's remarkable details, shown in its dominant red color, were captured using a sensitive camera, and long exposures that include image data from a narrowband filter taken from Eagle Ridge Observatory in Calif. on Sept. 26-27, 2011. Bob and Janice Fera  Scientists discovered a valentine from Mars when a camera on the Mars Global Surveyor shot a heart-shaped pit, formed when a straight-walled trough collapsed. The photo was taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera on the Mars Global Surveyor and released in June 1999. NASA/Getty Images  The Heart and Soul nebulae are seen in this infrared mosaic released May 24, 2010, from NASA's WISE. Located in the constellation Cassiopeia, about 6,000 light-years from Earth, the Heart and Soul nebulae form a vast star-forming complex that makes up part of the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. The nebula to the right is the Heart, and to the left is the Soul nebula. Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images  Generations of stars can be seen in this infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope released in Aug. 2008\. This image contains some of the best evidence yet for the triggered star-formation theory. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian  NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft has captured a lovely view of a bright, heart-shaped mesa in the south polar region of the red planet, released in Feb. 2000\. The heart-shaped feature is about 837 feet across. According to Mars Global Surveyor scientists, the presence of this mesa indicates that the darker, rough terrain that surrounds it was once covered by a layer of the bright material. NASA  This Hubble image taken in Aug. 2012, of the Antennae galaxies is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. As the two galaxies smash together, billions of stars are born, mostly in groups and clusters of stars. The brightest and most compact of these are called super star clusters. NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team  A bright pink symbol of love appears against the backdrop of the night sky over ESO's Paranal Observatory in northern Chile, released on Feb.13, 2012\. Julien Girard drew the heart in the air by shining a tiny flashlight keychain at the camera during a 25-second exposure with a tripod. The central region of the Milky Way appears in the middle of the heart, as the plane of our galaxy stretches across the image. Julien H. V. Girard—ESO ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4218328/hearts-from-space/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4218328/hearts-from-space/"},"headline":"Spot 9 Cosmic Valentines From Space","datePublished":"2016-02-12T14:44:39.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:00:25.544Z","description":"From a small heart-shaped island in Croatia to a mesa on the surface of Mars","url":"https://time.com/4218328/hearts-from-space/","keywords":["photography","Space","milky way","galaxy","Love","Valentine's Day","Pluto","nebula","Science"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf21e2bd4f1e9bfc0/69887d52196cf4d61903a4c6/time-valentines-day-hearts-in-space-pluto.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Photo","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-photo/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf21e2bd4f1e9bfc0/69887d52196cf4d61903a4c6/time-valentines-day-hearts-in-space-pluto.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"New Horizons Nears July 14 Flyby Of Pluto","caption":"An image of Pluto taken from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 13, 2015.","creditText":"NASA//APL/SwRI/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/photography/","name":"photography"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4218328/hearts-from-space/","name":"Spot 9 Cosmic Valentines From Space"}}]}] ```