NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S SPACE PICTURES THIS WEEK LXXXVIII

Best New Space Pictures: "Super Earth," Solar Storm, More
By National Geographic News, 4 January 2014.

A snowstorm hammers the U.S., the sun rages on New Year's Day, and a "Super Earth" gets a closer look in this week's best space pictures.

1. Everest Reigns Atop the Himalaya

High atop the Himalaya, Mount Everest towers over its neighbours in this picture taken by NASA's EOS-1 spacecraft. In Nepal, the mountain is called Sagarmatha, which means "mother of the universe." (See: "The State of Everest: The Climbers Weigh In.")

The snowy scene disguises the origins of the Himalaya, built of marine limestone that crumpled upward to form mighty mountains in the collision of Asia with the Indian subcontinent, some 40 million years ago.

2. Alien Atmospheres

The "Super Earth" planet, GJ 1214b, possesses six times the mass of Earth and high, dense clouds, which are depicted here blanketing its atmosphere. The Hubble Space Telescope team reported atmospheric data from this world and a "Warm Neptune" planet orbiting another star this week. (See "A Banner Year in the Hunt for Exoplanets [2013]."

Alien planets aplenty orbit nearby stars, with more than a thousand detected in the last decade. But the clouds that cloak these worlds are only now coming into focus. Ultimately, in their investigations of exoplanet atmospheres, astronomers hope to someday find an Earth-size planet with an atmosphere that might support life.

3. Mercury's Battered Face

Billions of years of asteroid impacts have shaped the face of Mercury, marking the planet with the cratered hills seen in this image from the space agency's MESSENGER spacecraft. (See "NASA's First Pictures of Mercury Taken From Orbit.")

Sharpened by sunlight on the horizon, Mercury's dust-lined ridges come into sharp focus. In orbit around Mercury since 2011, MESSENGER has undertaken a high-resolution mapping campaign of scientifically compelling parts of its surface. The spacecraft will continue operating and taking pictures of Mercury until 2015.

4. New Year's Day Flare

Happy New Year! The sun greeted the calendar rolling over with a pair of flares, seen in various wavelengths captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft.

The region of the sun where the two flares originated, called AR1936, has been a hot spot for recent solar activity. It should rotate out of view in the next few days.

5. Rosette Nebula Shines Bright

The Rosette Nebula hangs in the sky like a holiday wreath in this Christmas Eve photo submitted to National Geographic's Your Shot.

Located some 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros, the nebula takes its name from its rosebud-shaped folds, as seen in this image taken from Berkley, Michigan.

6. Lunar Rendezvous With Venus

The Swiss Alps serves as a heavenly home for a rendezvous between the crescent moon and crescent Venus, one of the week's sky-watching highlights.

Venus heads toward conjunction with the sun on January 12, when it passes on the opposite side of our star as seen from Earth. It will reappear in the sky toward the end of the month.

[Source: National Geographic News. Edited.]