NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S BEST SPACE PICTURES THIS WEEK LXX

Week's Best Space Pictures: New "Blue Marble," Pluto's Peaks
By Jane J. Lee, National Geographic News, 24 July 2015.

Feed your need for heavenly views of the universe with our pick of the most awe-inspiring space pictures. This week, crew members bound for the International Space Station blast off while scientists peer into the dawn of "normal" galaxies.

1. Up, Up, and Away

A Soyuz rocket shoots into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on July 23. Three crew members bound for the International Space Station for a five month mission were on board.

2. Frozen

A mountain range near the southwestern edge of Pluto's heart-shaped Tombaugh region slices through an image sent back by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. The icy peaks are about 0.5 to 1 mile high - similar to the U.S. Appalachian mountains.

3. Sunlit

This is the first picture of Earth's entire sunny side that NASA has released since the famous "Blue Marble" image in 1972. Images published in the interim have been stitched together from multiple pictures taken at different times.

4. Cracked

Traces of billion-year-old lava tubes radiate from the centre of this image. Located in Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa, the rare collection of concentric rings shunts water that falls during the rainy season into temporary streams.

5. Smoky

Satellites captured smoke from Canadian and Alaskan wildfires drifting over the Greenland Sea. Alaska has had its worst fire season ever, with millions of acres burned as of July 7. Over three million acres have burned in Canada as of July 15.

6. In Focus

This is the first ever clear view of a "normal" galaxy less than a billion years after the Big Bang. The orange dot is a cloud of coalescing gas and the greenish-yellow blob to the top right is the BDF 3299 galaxy.

Photo gallery by Nicole Werbeck.

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