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Rosetta's lander, Philae, is imaged shortly following its deployment in November 2014. Philae became the first-ever spacecraft to soft-land upon a comet's surface. (credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)

In November 2014, a strange-looking little spider of a spacecraft caught the world's attention. It may have been one of the oddest-looking pioneers of all time, resembling a mini-refrigerator attached to an insect's legs. The spacecraft, christened Philae, electrified both die-hard space fans and casual observers despite its alien appearance. It made the first-ever soft landing on the face of a comet.

Philae actually made soft landings, as it “bounced” twice on the comet's surface after its landing harpoons did not deploy as planned. Eventually it settled down in its final resting spot, a craggy, dark region called Abydos. Here it delivered another surprise when it “reawakened” seven months after a lack of solar power put it into hibernation.

For some, one of the largest surprises was the identity of people who built Philae and the Rosetta orbiter that delivered it to the comet. While those casually in touch with space news focused on the mission's dramatic twists and turns, dedicated space-watchers recognized it as a historic mission for one oft-overlooked group—the European Space Agency (ESA).

Science is an inherently visual activity. Yes, we can know about all sorts of things in the abstract and try to envision them in our minds. But it's one thing to hear a description of the developing brain, and another thing entirely to see one as it's developing. In some cases, images tell us things that it was simply impossible to know otherwise.

2015's science came with its own host of images, some of them taken by the scientists and engineers involved, others we managed to take ourselves. So, we put together a gallery of some of our favorites from this past year; what follows is a little bit on why we liked them.

NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

A close up showing the jagged peaks of Norgay Montes, some of which reach 3,500m. The late evening sunlight captures just how rugged this terrain is.

16 more images in gallery

New worlds: Pluto is too small to have much heat left over from its formation, so the expectations were that we'd see little more than a crater-ridden landscape. Pluto is anything but, and the images have left scientists scrambling to explain a landscape with complex geology. Similar things are true about another dwarf planet, the largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres. Here, the surface was a crater-scarred landscape, but it contained enigmatic bright spots that continued to grab everyone's attention as the Dawn probe moved closer.