Science Pictures of the Week: Profile of a comet lander, storms holding hands and lightning from above

Rosetta’s OSIRIS wide-angle camera captured this view of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November 2014 at 17:18 GMT (onboard spacecraft time). Marked is what the OSIRIS team believe to be the Philae lander above the rim of the large depression – named Hatmehit – on the comet’s small lobe. The image has been used to guide subsequent lander search efforts, and provides the basis for trajectory reconstructions.

In January 2015, two tropical cyclones— Diamondra and Eunice—swirled over the central Indian Ocean. Neither storm was particularly strong, nor were they expected to make landfall or cause significant damage. But their close proximity offered striking views to satellites.
If two tropical cyclones draw near each other, they begin to rotate cyclonically around an axis connecting their centers - something meteorologists call the Fujiwhara Effect. Such binary storms can even merge if their centers get close enough.
"But in this case, the centers of the two vortices appear to be too far apart," explained Brian McNoldy, a meteorologist at the University of Miami. "As a rough rule of thumb, the centers would need to be separated by less than 10 degrees (about 1,100 kilometers) for them to start rotating about each other in some fashion. From the latest Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecasts, both storms are expected to move to the southeast at about the same speed, so they probably won’t get any closer to each other."

Lightning illuminates the area it strikes on Earth but the flash can be seen from space, too. This image was taken from 400 km above Earth in 2012 by an astronaut on the International Space Station travelling at 28 800 km/h. At these distances a camera flash is pointless to take night-time images of Earth, but our planet moves by so quickly images can end up being blurred.
ESA’s Nightpod camera aid compensates for the motion of the Station, allowing for crystal-clear night images such as these. The target stays firmly centred in the frame, so the final image is in focus. Astronauts can set up the device to take ultra-sharp images automatically using off-the-shelf cameras.