NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S BEST SPACE PICTURES THIS WEEK X

Best Space Pictures: Saturn's Lights, a Rocket's Arc, and Canary Nights
By Jane J. Lee, National Geographic News, 30 May 2014.

Auroras light up the dark, a rocket flies high, and Hubble reveals a flooded city in this week's best space pictures.

1. Soyuz Lift-Off

A Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft lifts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on May 29.

The ship carried a new crew bound for the International Space Station, including NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev, and German astronaut Alexander Gerst.

2. Birds of a Feather

Stars in the constellation Pavo (Latin for "peacock") flock together in a "globular cluster" in an image released May 25.

Located 13,000 light-years from Earth, the cluster harbours more than 100,000 stars and is about a hundred light-years across.

3. Underwater

NASA's Earth Observing-1 satellite captured an image of the city of Vidovice in Bosnia and Herzegovina covered by floodwaters on May 23.

The region, including the Sava River (light green ribbon at centre), was overwhelmed by three month's worth of rain in just three days. The river overflowed its banks, surrounding Vidovice (brown smudge in the upper part of the light green blob at centre) and submerging some of the city's buildings.

4. Extraterrestrial Aurora

Auroras race around Saturn's north pole in an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on May 19. At times the bursts of light whipped around the pole three times as fast as the planet's rotation.

5. Icy Light Show

Northern lights shimmer above Norway's Lofoten Islands (map), north of the Arctic Circle, in an image submitted to Your Shot on May 28.

6. Canary Nights

The Milky Way galaxy drapes the night sky above La Palma (map) in the Canary Islands. Lights from a city on the island's southern shore paint distant clouds a brilliant amber.

Photographer Babak Tafreshi took the image - submitted this week to the World at Night - from the edge of the Caldera de Taburiente. The caldera, or crater, is the remnant of a volcano that collapsed in on itself one to two million years ago. The luminous purple spire is a flowering plant known as Tower of Jewels.

[Source: National Geographic News. Edited.]