NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S BEST SPACE PICTURES THIS WEEK LXIV

Week's Best Space Pictures: Glass Found on Mars
By Jane J. Lee, National Geographic News, 12 June 2015.

Feed your need for "heavenly" views of the universe every Friday with our picks of the most awe-inspiring space pictures. This week, the Canary Islands stir up trouble in the clouds and researchers spy some glass on Mars.

1. Looking for Glass

Orbiting instruments spotted glass (green) in the Alga Crater on Mars' southern hemisphere. The glass formed in the extreme heat of a violent impact, and researchers hope to one day search for evidence of ancient life within.

2. Up, Up, and Away

NASA's test flight of a new braking system for future Mars missions - a combination of airbags and a parachute - went up in smoke on June 8. Unfortunately, the parachute disintegrated right after deploying and inflating.

3. Cold Shoulder

A NOAA satellite captured infrared data on hurricane Blanca over the Pacific Ocean about 350 miles southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. Researchers used the false-colour image to locate the strongest thunderstorms within the larger storm.

4. Neighbours

Say hello to one of the Milky Way's galactic neighbours. PGC 18431 is a dwarf irregular galaxy that's part of our "local volume," a sphere 35 million light-years in diameter that surrounds the Milky Way and hundreds of other galaxies.

5. Vortices

The Canary Islands spawn cloud swirls called Von Kármán vortices. They form when a fluid - in this case, clouds - encounters an obstacle that nudges the fluid into eddies. Here, the volcanic islands are in the way.

6. Big Bite

Saturn's moon Tethys sports quite the pockmark (right). It's so large - about the size of Africa - that astronomers gave the crater its own name: Odysseus.

Photo gallery by Mallory Benedict.

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