Nat'l Geo pics of the week

[n2doc]

Surreal Sunrise
Photograph courtesy David Kaplan

Clouds flow like a river over the lights of Swiss villages as the rising sun crowns the Alps with morning gold in a January 30 picture. To the right, a crescent moon and the bright dot of Venus decorate the paling sky.

Venus is closer to the sun than Earth, so—like a car going around a racetrack—Venus periodically overtakes Earth as it orbits. This means Venus changes from the evening star, visible after sunset, to the morning star, visible before sunrise, every 584 days.


Star-Struck Aurora
Photograph by P-M Heden, TWAN

Stars wheeling across the sky seem to cut through a fiery aurora in a recently released long-exposure picture taken in western Sweden.

Auroras can appear in different colors depending on the types of gases in the atmosphere and where these gases are. Auroras happen when energized particles form the sun interact with air molecules and give them extra charge. These "excited" molecules then emit light. Oxygen, for example, can create auroras in yellow-green to red, while nitrogen emits light in blues and purples.



Double Trouble
Image courtesy SDO/NASA

An arch of plasma called a solar filament erupts from the sun on January 28 in a video still from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft.

The craft caught the sun producing two events at once: At the same time the filament erupted, a coronal mass ejection on the opposite side of the solar disk (not pictured) blasted a huge spray of particles into space.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/pictures/110204-best-space-pictures-northern-lights-aurora-borealis-moon-venus-alps-130/

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1. Awesome. They look like sci-fi movies.

Yet they are all natural....

[tridim]

2. That first pic is just about perfect in every way

Either that or the Sun pic are going on my desktop for awhile.

[liberal N proud]

3. That first one is incredible

I have been at the top of the alps at sun rise, it is breath taking.