This week at Softonic HQ we’re concentrating on bringing you fantastic wallpapers for your Windows PC or Apple Mac, and also all the best places to find them. If you’re looking for cool desktop backgrounds including scenes and images from your favorite video games, the biggest sporting events around the world, the latest movies, and hip minimalist pictures we have you covered. Today though, we’re covering wallpapers and backgrounds from space. We don’t mean they’ve come from space; we mean desktop wallpapers of all things space related. We’ve got to say, some of these are incredible!
With these Space wallpapers we’re going to do things a little differently. Rather than highlighting particular images we like such as famous nebulas, supernovas, black holes, spiral galaxies, and planets like Saturn and Jupiter; we’re going to concentrate on where to find them all. Let’s go.
HD and 4K Space Wallpapers
Wallpaper Access
As you’ve probably guessed from the name of this website, it doesn’t specialize in space-related matters. Clearly, what Wallpaper Access specializes in are wallpapers and backgrounds. That doesn’t mean though, that the space images you find here won’t be special. On the contrary, Wallpaper Access is a great place to go find a huge collection of ultra-high-resolution space images that you can use as the background on your PC or Mac. In particular, the 4K Space Wallpapers collection is fantastic, with 69 breathtaking scenes both of outer space and views from outer space looking back to earth.
Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Telescope is one of the most iconic human machines ever built. Thanks to its earth orbiting platform, the Hubble has been able to capture some of the most incredible scenes of space the human race has ever laid eyes on. If you have a particular image of outer space stuck in your mind, chances are it was taken by the Hubble. By going to straight to the source of those space images here, you’ll be able to get your hands on space images with ridiculously epic titles like A rose made of galaxies , The pillars of creation , and Galactic wreckage. What’s also great about the Hubble website is that it gives you free access to the full size original image meaning you won’t have to compromise on quality, if you don’t want to, and you’ll also get interesting explanations about all the images written by teams that captured them. If you’re looking for HD space wallpapers of the Milky Way, Orion’s Belt, our Solar System and beyond; this is the place to start your search.
AI robot revolts on the International Space Station
Unsplash
Unsplash might just be the coolest stock photography library on the internet. It has thousands, if not millions of fantastic images, which have all been uploaded by the artist or photographer behind them. What’s even better about Unsplash is that all the images are available for free. As you’d expect from such a site, Unsplash has a fantastic section on space images that has many great space scenes and vistas that would be perfect as your wallpaper.
Space.com
Space.com describes itself as, “the premier source of space exploration, innovation, and astronomy news, chronicling (and celebrating) humanity’s ongoing expansion across the final frontier.” Sounds cool, doesn’t it! As you’d rightly imagine, all that makes space.com the perfect place to find some truly awe-inspiring space-related backgrounds. Also, just like with at the Hubble website you’ll not just get the images to use as your background, you’ll also learn about what is going in the images and how they were taken. If you’re looking for something a little deeper than merely an image that looks cool, this is the place to go.
NASA
Our final source of amazing space-related wallpapers is NASA. As you’d expect from the most famous space agency on the planet, NASA has a huge library of space images. These include photos captured by telescopes on earth and in orbit, photos of cool equipment such as radio telescopes, mission mockup images like those of the famous Curiosity Rover, historic mission photos, and much much more. If you want backgrounds with space shuttles and International Space Station missions, this is the site you’re looking for.
NASA’s heartbreaking final words to the Mars rover Opportunity
Out of all the sites we’ve brought you today, the NASA website is our favorite because on top of offering you some fantastic images that will make great backgrounds, being a fantastic place to learn about space, and doing all of that for free; many of the images on the NASA site will make you feel emotional as you’ll recognize them. You might know who the person is in the image, what the shot is of, or even just feel an emotional attachment for the robot you’re looking at. NASA is a huge part of our global culture these days and that really gives the desktop wallpapers you’ll find here a lot more weight.
Wrapping up
We’ve shown you five great places to source all the best space wallpapers available on the web. If you’re a big space fan, you’ll definitely find the wallpaper you’re looking for on one of the five sites above. In fact, you’ll find a lot more than just backgrounds on three of the sites meaning it all depends just how deep you want to go. You might log on to the Hubble or NASA websites simply looking for a new background for your PC and emerge hours later having ended up researching anything from the composition of moon rocks to the age of the oldest and youngest galaxies. That’s just it with space though, the possibilities are endless.
More about space travel
3 billionaires racing to build the future of space travel ►
Watch Elon Musk’s new rocket light up the California sky ►
Take a look at Elon Musk’s crazy new spaceship ►
Walk on the moon with this 4K guided tour by NASA ►
