The ocean glows an eerie blue and stars leave streaks across the sky in a photograph taken on a beach in Montezuma, Costa Rica, on January 25.
Often, microscopic algae are responsible for creating these beautiful light shows in the ocean. Physically tumbling around in ocean waves can trigger the production of this kind of illumination.
A Chilly Blanket
Photograph by NOAA/NASA GOES Project
Major parts of the U.S. have suffered under the chilly embrace of Arctic air, courtesy of the polar vortex—a mass of freezing cold air blown south from Canada.
Residents of the Gulf Coast states and those up the Eastern Seaboard have been treated to snowstorms and temperatures that wouldn't seem out of place in Alaska. (See )
This especially frosty winter manifests in the clouds and snow that blanket much of the U.S. East Coast in this NOAA satellite image taken January 28.
Star Trails
Photograph by NASA, ESAAcknowledgements: A. Sarajedini (University of Florida) and Judy Schmidt
Usually, when people get lost they end up flustered, sweaty, and late. When Hubble gets a little lost, we get abstract art.
This is an actual image, released January 27, taken by NASA's famous eye in the sky. But it was an accident.
When Hubble calibrates its position before making observations, it locks on to a fixed point in space—called a guide star—in order to make any corrections.
For some reason, Hubble locked on to a bad star—perhaps a binary star—which caused an error in its tracking system, resulting in the image above.
The red streaks are star tracks from globular cluster NGC 288.
Rover Selfie
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA/SDO
Our sun emitted a midlevel solar flare (left) on January 30, captured in this image taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
But the moon sneaks its way into the image as well, as seen in the curved bit of negative space on the lower right.
Sun and Moon
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ
This self-portrait of the Mars rover Opportunity reveals the lone robot looking a little dusty, perhaps a little creaky.
But after a decade roaming the red planet, Opportunity is still kicking. Its handlers took images of their rover and combined them into a self-portrait, which they released January 23—Opportunity's ten-year anniversary. (See )
A Fan of Ice
Photograph by NASA/JPL/Caltech
A part of the Hofsjökull ice cap in Iceland dominates the left side of this image, released on January 28. The fan of ice in the upper left corner is a glacier called Mûlajökul.
Ultramassive Black Hole
Photograph by NASA/CXC/Stanford/J.Hlavacek-Larrondo et al, Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/M.Postman & CLASH team
A monster lurks at the purple heart of this image, released January 23. That beast is one of the most powerful black holes known to science, as observed in this composite image from NASA's Chandra x-ray observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope.
The purple cloud, seen through Chandra, is actually hot gas surrounding galaxy cluster RX J1532. The black hole at the center is sending out supersonic jets so powerful, they're tearing holes the size of the Milky Way galaxy in the cloud. (See )
Northern Lights
PHOTOGRAPH BY FLOSI P., NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC YOUR SHOT
The northern lights swirl above a building on Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland. Flosi P. uploaded the image to National Geographic's Your Shot community on January 25. (See )
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