NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S SPACE PICTURES THIS WEEK XLI

Space Pictures This Week: Green Lantern, Supersonic Star
By National Geographic News, 26 December 2012.

1. Green Lantern

Another glorious, backlit view of the planet Saturn and its rings has been captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, as seen in a picture released December 18.

On October 17, during its 174th orbit around the gas giant, Cassini was deliberately positioned within Saturn's shadow, "a perfect location from which to look in the direction of the sun and take a backlit view of the rings and the dark side of the planet," according to NASA.

(Related: "Ten Best Pictures From NASA's Cassini Probe—Saturn, More.")

2. Starry Night

Photograph by Wally Pacholka, TWAN

The Milky Way glitters over Yosemite, California, in a picture taken December 14 and submitted to the astronomy-education project The World at Night (TWAN).

Our galaxy is far larger, brighter, and more massive than most other galaxies. From end to end, the Milky Way's starry disk, observable with the naked eye and through optical telescopes, spans 120,000 light-years.

(See Milky Way pictures in National Geographic magazine.)

3. Celestial Ornament

The Hubble Space Telescope has spied a nearby planetary nebula that resembles a holiday ornament wrapped in a ribbon, as seen in a picture released December 18.

Planetary nebulae such as NGC 5189 represent the final brief stage in the life of a medium-size star like our sun.

(See more nebula pictures.)

4. It's a Bird, It's a Plane

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carries U.S. astronaut Thomas Marshburn, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield to the International Space Station on December 19.

While floating some 240 miles (390 kilometres) above Earth's surface, the space station has hosted a rotating international crew since November 2000.

(See our space-exploration timeline.)

5. Martian Hazard

Still not home for the holidays, NASA's Mars rover Opportunity keeps plugging away on the red planet's surface.

Here, the rover's hazard camera scans a target called Onaping at the base of Copper Cliff in the Endeavor crater. At least Opportunity calls home.

(See "Mars Rover Detects Simple Organic Compounds.")

6. Jewel Box

A star cluster named Jewel Box sparkles in a picture submitted to the Your Shot photo community on December 18.

Visible as a faint smudge with the naked eye under dark skies, the Jewel Box is located 6,440 light-years away towards the constellation Crux, or the Southern Cross. The bright orange star in the centre of the cluster is known as Kappa Crucis.

(See another picture of Jewel Box.)

7. Supersonic Star

The giant star Zeta Ophiuchi is having a "shocking" effect on surrounding dust clouds in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, released on December 18.

Stellar winds flowing out from this fast-moving star are making ripples in the dust, creating a bow shock seen as glowing gossamer threads only visible in infrared.

[Source: National Geographic News. Edited.]