Best Night Sky Photos of the Week: March 8, 2014

Majestic Milky Way Galaxy Rises Over Remote Island (Photo)

project nightflight

Green airglow shimmers atop translucent clouds as the Milky Way rises over a remote island off the northwest coast of Africa in a majestic photo recently sent to Space.com. [Full Story]

Orange Supergiant Star Shines Through Hazy Nebula in Amazing Photo

Jeffrey O. Johnson

Orange supergiant star, Xi Cygni, beams through the red haze of the North American Nebula's "west coast," in this stunning night sky photo recently sent in to Space.com. [Full Story]

Whoa! Milky Way, Auroras & Thunderstorms Stun In New Time-Lapse Video

Randy Halverson | Dakotalapse.com | facebook.com/dakotalapse

Randy Halverson (dakotalapse.com) captured the footage from April-Nov 2013 in South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. 2 Canon 5D Mark III and 1 Canon 6D cameras were used to create this compilation. [See the Video]

Bright Fireball Over New Mexico Rattles Houses - See and Hear It | Video

Thomas Ashcraft

On March 6th, 2014, a meteor slammed into the Earth's atmosphere and burned up over the night skies of north central New Mexico. Thomas Ashcraft captured the sights with a his fireball camera and the sounds with a forward-scatter meteor radar. [See the Video]

©1989 Ken Spencer

In March 1989, a sunspot unleashed a solar flare towards the Earth that caused a spectacular display of the northern lights, or aurora borealis, reaching all the way down to the Gulf Coast. [See More Photos]

100-Foot Space Rock Flies Between Moon and Earth | Video

Virtual Telescope Project

Asteroid 2014 DX110 was captured by Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project (virtualtelescope.eu). Its closest approach is ~217,000 miles away from Earth on March 5th, 2014. (looped) [See the Video]

Storm of Light

Koichi Wakata ‏(via Twitter as ‏@Astro_Wakata)

On Feb. 23, 2014, Dr. Koichi Wakata tweeted this image of the aurora australis taken aboard the International Space Station (ISS). In another tweet about watching the phenomenon, he wrote: “It looked like a storm of light.” Portions of the space station’s equipment appear at left, while a few stars peek out of the inky blackness of space at bottom. Wakata represents the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) as a Flight Engineer on International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 38 and the Commander of Expedition 39. [See more of astronaut Koichi Wakata's photos from space]

Auroras Come to Sunny Prestatyn

Garry Owens

Astrophotographer Garry Owens sent in a photo of the recent brilliant auroral display seen in the United Kingdom. The auroral activity stemmed from sunspot AR1967 erupting, producing the strongest solar flare of 2014 whic produced auroras at lower latitudes than usual in the northern hemisphere. Owens took the shot on Feb. 27, 2014, in Prestatyn, Wales, UK. [See More Photos]

The Lights in the Sky Have Finally Arrived

Auroramax

Canada's automated aurora camera tweeted this photo, writing: "AURORAMAX GALLERY • Latest #photo of #aurora borealis above #Yellowknife NWT taken at 01:43 MST on Feb 28, 2014. [See More Photos]

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