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An Elusive Green Light

The famed northern lights shine across the shores of Pontoon Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories in an image released September 23.

Green is the most common color of this natural phenomenon that has dazzled sky-watchers for millennia. (See more aurora pictures.)

—Photo Gallery by Nicole Werbeck, Text by Linda Qiu

Photograph by Yuichi Takasaka, TWAN

Week's Best Space Pictures: The Sun Stretches, Dust Swallows Africa, and the Milky Way Arcs

The sun sends out magnetic material, dust blows across the Atlantic, and the Milky Way arcs over the Himalaya in this week's best space pictures.

Published September 27, 2014