NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S BEST SPACE PICTURES THIS WEEK XXVII

Week's Best Space Pictures: The Sun Stretches, Dust Swallows Africa, and the Milky Way Arcs
By Linda Qiu, National Geographic News, 26 September 2014.

The sun sends out magnetic material, dust blows across the Atlantic, and the Milky Way arcs over the Himalaya in this week's best space pictures.

1. An Elusive Green Light

Photograph by Yuichi Takasaka, TWAN

The famed northern lights shine across the shores of Pontoon Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories in an image released September 23.

Green is the most common colour of this natural phenomenon that has dazzled sky-watchers for millennia. (See more aurora pictures.)

2. Calving Chunks

Ice chunks crack off a central ice sheet in Greenland in an image released September 23. Jakobshavn Glacier, seen at the bottom, and others drain some 39 billion tons (35 billion tonnes) of ice annually. (See "Greenland Glacier Races to Ocean at Record Speed.")

3. Arcing Over India

Photograph by Ajay Talwar, TWAN

Stars in the Milky Way galaxy arc over the Himalayan night sky in a panorama. The bright light at the bottom of the image isn't a meteorite or a fallen satellite, but the light from a tent perched on Hatu Peak, India.

4. A Saturnian Family Portrait

Three of Saturn's 53 moons appear together in a rare family photo captured by the Cassini spacecraft. Tethys (centre) is the largest of the three, with a jumbled terrain telling of a violent past.

Prometheus (lower left) is the smallest of the three and spends its time carving tracks into Saturn's F-ring. Hyperion (to the left of Tethys) is the "wild one," tumbling around Saturn in a chaotic spin. (See "Pictures: Huge 'Snowballs' Seen Piercing Saturn's Outer Ring.")

5. Blowing in the Wind

Dust from the Sahara swallows Africa in an image released September 21. Astronauts on the International Space Station took the picture as the station passed over Libya.

Saharan dust reaches all corners of the world, fertilizing Amazonian soils, settling on Atlantic coral reefs, and, perhaps, increasing snowpack in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range. (See "How Dust Might Make Drought Worse (or a Bit Better) in California.")

6. Quite a Stretch

Magnetic plasma arcs away from the sun and out of sight in an extreme ultraviolet image captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The superheated material is likely reaching from one magnetically active region to another.

7. Ripple Effect

Crests known as transverse aeolian ridges (TARs) ripple across Mars's surface. Up to 19.7 feet (six meters) tall and tens of feet apart, the ridges are shaped by the wind in a mysterious process that continues to baffle scientists. TARs are commonly found in the channels and craters that riddle the red planet's surface.

8. Training for Space

Dawn breaks over a launchpad in Kazakhstan as workers ready the area for a Soyuz TMA-14M in an image captured September 23. The Soyuz capsule is scheduled to carry Expedition 41 crewmembers to the International Space Station (ISS) on September 25.

Two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut will spend five and a half months orbiting Earth aboard the ISS. Now in its fourth generation of spacecraft, the Soyuz series first launched in the 1960s. (Watch "Live From Space: Soyuz Launch.")

Photo Gallery by Nicole Werbeck.

[Source: National Geographic News. Edited. Some links added.]