NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S SPACE PICTURES THIS WEEK LXXIX

Best New Space Pictures: Galactic Goblins, Alaskan Glows
By Andrew Fazekas, National Geographic News, 11 October 2013.

Northern lights, Martian sites, and Milky Way delights light up the week's best space pictures.

1. Milky Way Over Goblins

Photograph by Wally Pacholka, TWAN

A diffuse Milky Way cuts the night sky in half above the barren landscape of Goblin Valley State Park in Utah.

Partly hidden behind a river of gas and dust is the brightly burning core of our home galaxy, just visible near the horizon in this image. It lies more than 26,000 light-years away from Earth.

Stretching more than 100,000 light-years across, our Milky Way galaxy is home to some 200 billion stars. On Earth, we see the centre of the galaxy from the vantage of one of its outer spiral arms.

2. Kaleidoscope Eye

Photograph by Steven Coates, National Geographic Your Shot

This colourful portrait of the Helix nebula, made of the remnants of a sun-like star, was taken through a backyard telescope in Ocala, Florida, on October 5.

Located some 700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius, the Helix nebula is composed of colourful gas blown out from the outer atmosphere of the dying star.

3. Martian Chasm

A small tributary of the Grand Canyon of Mars, Hebes Chasma is pictured in this high-resolution image taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter on October 10.

Nearly 8 kilometres deep, Hebes Chasma forms a giant trough of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon system in the solar system.

Some 125 kilometres across at its widest point, the feature stretches to a length of roughly 315 kilometres. Mars scientists believe that flowing water may have carved out the entire canyon system more than a billion years ago.

4. Warming Up

Photograph by Vinay Balla, National Geographic Your Shot

Beneath a canopy of stars, Indonesian villagers huddle around the flames of a campfire on a cold night in Java, in this striking October 8 photograph submitted to National Geographic Your Shot.

While the Milky Way glows bright in the pristine skies, two volcanic mountains, Mount Bromo (smoking on the left) and Mount Batok loom in the distance.

5. Cosmic Wings

Photograph by Sanjana Greenhill, National Geographic Your Shot

Like giant ghostly wings, green auroras fly across the sky in this mountain scene taken near Anchorage, Alaska, on October 10.

These brilliant auroras were triggered by a coronal mass ejection that hit our planet early Thursday morning. A coronal mass ejection is a cloud of superheated gas and charged particles hurled off the sun.

When such an ejection hits the Earth, the solar particles can interact with charged particles caught in our planet's magnetic field to produce the northern and southern lights.

[Source: National Geographic News. Edited.]