NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S SPACE PICTURES THIS WEEK VII

Space Pictures This Week: Aurora Bubble, Martian Veins, More
By National Geographic, 22 March 2012.

1. Southern Sky Show

Photograph courtesy NASA

From their vantage point high above Earth, astronauts on the International Space Station were able to capture daybreak (left) and night-time auroras in a single frame. The newly released picture, snapped on March 6 over the Indian Ocean, also shows a Russian Soyuz spacecraft (centre) and a Progress resupply ship docked at the station.

2. Green Marble

Photograph by Babak Tafreshi, TWAN

Bright green auroras shimmer over a small Sami village in northern Sweden in a picture taken March 16. The bubble-like picture was created using an 8mm fish-eye lens, allowing the photographer to capture an all-sky view of the northern lights in a single frame.

3. Exposed Veins

Image courtesy U. Arizona/NASA

Bright streaks crossing the floor of an unnamed Martian crater appear to be mineral veins, according to scientists who studied this newly released image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. On Earth such sheet-like veins form when water flows through fractures in rock, leaving behind mineral deposits. The region seen above is the central mound of a large impact crater, where bedrock was lifted up from deep inside the red planet. Scientists think heat from the impact could have melted ice in the Martian crust, allowing water to flow through the newly fractured rocks.

4. Planetary Reunion

Photograph courtesy Luc Perrot

Venus (right) and Jupiter appear to meet in the sky over the French island of Réunion in a recently released picture of this month's planetary conjunction. Also called the evening star, Venus is the brightest planet we can see with the naked eye, due in part to its thick, highly reflective atmosphere and its closeness to Earth.

5. Next-Gen Astronaut

Photograph courtesy NASA

Controlled from the ground, NASA's Robonaut 2 holds an instrument for measuring air velocity aboard the International Space Station on March 14. The robotic astronaut was handling the device as part of a series of dexterity tests, which included spelling out "Hello, world" in sign language.

6. Cloudy Day

Image courtesy U. Arizona/NASA

Wispy clouds partially obscure patches of bright winter ice on the dunes of northern Mars in a newly released picture from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Mars is now in northern spring, and the planet's coating of seasonal carbon dioxide ice is starting to sublimate - turn directly from a solid to a gas.

[Source: National Geographic. Edited. Top image added.]