3C 273, in the constellation Virgo, looks like an ordinary faint star. It is actually the core of a galaxy where a giant black hole is devouring matter, about 2.4 billion light-years away. Its light set off when Earth was home only to microscopic life. In 1963, it became the first quasar to have its distance measured.
A large share of Earth's water molecules formed in the interstellar cloud that existed before the Sun was even born, more than 4.6 billion years ago. You are literally drinking a cosmic fossil.
By day, the Martian sky looks butterscotch because of fine dust hanging in the air. But at dusk, those same grains scatter blue light forward, creating a bluish glow around the Sun. Rovers have photographed these blue sunsets: the exact reverse of what we see on Earth.