Week’s Best Space Pictures: Earth From Above and Rover Selfies
By Rachel A. Becker, National Geographic News, 21 August 2015.
By Rachel A. Becker, National Geographic News, 21 August 2015.
Feed your need for heavenly views of the universe with our pick of the most awe-inspiring space pictures. This week, smoke rises in the west, a dwarf planet gets a close-up, and lights dance over Earth.
1. Cosmic Couple
The Hubble Space Telescope captured the star WR 124 (also known as Hen 2-427), surrounded by the 10,000-year-old nebula M1-67. Both are part of the constellation Sagittarius.
2. Coastal Construction
These images show, on the left, the Red Sea coast 30 kilometres (19 miles) northwest of Hurghada, Egypt in 1985, largely untouched by human construction. On the right, the same location in 2015 with the addition of a resort called El Gouna, visible as the patch of green at the top of the sand.
3. Heavenly Body
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft snapped this picture from 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometres) above dwarf planet Ceres’ surface on June 9, 2015. The crater at the top stretches 50 miles (80 kilometres) across.
4. Rover Selfie
NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover took a series of selfies with the MAHLI camera on its robotic arm on August 5, 2015. The shots were combined to create this picture. In this image, the rover is sitting on top of a drilling target called “Buckskin.”
5. California Is Burning
Smoke rises from several wildfires in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest area and Fresno County in this image taken by NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite on the evening of August 17, 2015 (read a photographer’s take on the wildfires here).
6. Light Show
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly snapped a photograph of the dancing lights of the aurora from the International Space Station on August 15, 2015.
Photo gallery by Mallory Benedict.
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