NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S BEST SPACE PICTURES THIS WEEK XIV

Best Space Pictures: Orion Rises, Mars Tilts, and Aurora Blooms
By National Geographic News, 27 June 2014.

Echoes of a star explosion, space station revelations, and prairie observations shine in the week's best space pictures.

1. Above the Atmosphere

Orion's Belt rises above the ghostly arc that defines the Earth's atmosphere, in this June 23 view from the International Space Station.

Astronaut Reid Wiseman captured the photo from a space station observation window, a favourite place for crew members. Wiseman regularly shares photos with the world on Twitter.

The Destiny lab module, a laboratory used by crew scientists aboard the station, is seen in the upper right of the picture.

2. Mars's Dusty North Pole

Ancient dust layers cover the north pole of Mars, seen in this June picture from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The layers likely formed over millions of years as the orbital tilt of the red planet shifted. Different atmospheric conditions over the pole have left different-coloured deposits over the course of time.

3. Selfie on Mars

A mosaic of self-portraits by NASA's Curiosity rover were stitched together to create this June 23 image of the rolling chemistry lab.

Despite some tire damage, the rover has completed its first Martian year (the equivalent of two years on Earth) and is about halfway to Mount Sharp, its most important exploration target.

The self-portraits was made at a site known as Windjana, where the rover drilled into layers of sandstone to determine their chemical composition.

4. Not in Kansas Anymore

Photograph by Brad Russell, National Geographic Your Shot

A beautiful aurora blossoms over a barn on the Canadian prairie, shown in this June 26 Your Shot picture.

Auroras bloom in the sky after the sun unleashes solar storms that jolt the Earth's upper atmosphere. Photographer Brad Russell called this photo a reward for staying up "past my bedtime."

5. Glacial Fingers Retreat

The San Quintín glacier appears in this photo mosaic released on June 24 by NASA's International Space Station crew.

The glacier is the largest of 28 in the Northern Patagonian Ice Field, the smaller of two ice fields that once were joined and covered much of the Chilean Andes Mountains.

Eight photos taken with an experimental camera aboard the orbiting lab's Destiny module were required to create the composite.

6. Supernova Rides Giraffe

A supernova explosion still gleams on the upper arm of a beautiful spiral galaxy, seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in this June 23 observation.

The galaxy, dubbed NGC 2441, is embedded in the constellation Camelopardalis, the Giraffe, and is about 180 million light-years away. Astronomers have tracked the supernova, a small white dot in the galaxy (look here for location), since its 1995 discovery, hence its name - SN1995E.

SN1995E is a Type 1A supernova, which are standard-size stellar explosions that serve as cosmic distance markers for astronomers. A stellar explosion may produce a "light echo" when its light bounces off dust within the galaxy (not visible in the image), an effect observed only twice before.

[Source: National Geographic News. Edited.]