The aurora's glow makes for thrilling photographs, but let's face it: The shimmer of the northern lights is a big part of the appeal. Here are three time-lapse video views looking at the northern lights from above and below, plus still-photo highlights from the past day or two.

The International Space Station's view of the green and red aurora was recorded back on Jan. 22, but the clip is part of a batch of seven night-flight videos released on Thursday via the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. The shots were snapped as the station soared from the Pacific Ocean, west of San Francisco, northeast across the United States toward Saskatchewan in Canada. The camera is looking northward, and to my mind, the presence of the station's solar panels and robotic arm in the foreground is a plus, not a minus. For a sharper version, go directly to the high-resolution QuickTime video.

The aurora most commonly takes on a greenish hue, but when electrically charged particles from the sun interact with atomic oxygen at higher altitudes — say, up to 200 miles — the glow turns red.

The past week has been a godsend for aurora-watchers, thanks to a series of outbursts from an active region on the sun, but now the solar storms have settled down. Observers caught the tail end of the heightened activity on Thursday night in regions of Scandinavia, Iceland, Scotland, Greenland and North America, as well as Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica in the south. Check SpaceWeather.com as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center for updates. And check out this album of videos and photos from all over:

Iurie Belegurschi

Iceland's Iurie Belegurschi offers this stunning picture of the aurora with the Venus-Jupiter conjunction shining in the sky, off to the right. For more of Belegurschi's photography, check out his Facebook page.

Andrei Penescu

Andrei Penescu captured this view of the northern lights on March 15 from Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. "Tonight was very special because it was the first time I've seen the sky full of red auroras. ... It was the best aurora show I've ever seen!" Penescu told SpaceWeather.com. Check out the gallery at SpaceWeather.com.

Minoru Yoneto

A red and purple auroral display lights up the skies over Queensland, New Zealand, in this March 16 view from Minoru Yoneto. "The auroras danced until sunrise," Yoneto told SpaceWeather.com. Check out the imagery on SpaceWeather.com.

More auroral glories:

• Southern exposure for auroral lights
• Sky lights go wild, north and south
• Solar storm lights up northern skies
• Slideshow: The best of the northern lights
• Cosmic Log's auroral archive

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Colorful videos prove that the astronauts on the International Space Station had the best seats in the house during last month's flare-up of auroral activity.

NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth is offering a whole new batch of time-lapse videos from the Jan. 25-30 period, when an active region on the sun was blasting out a healthy dose of electrically charged particles and lighting up Earth's upper atmosphere.

These latest videos are notable because they're assembled from still pictures that were taken at a rate of one frame per second, rather than the usual frame every three seconds. As a result, the pace of the videos is more leisurely and a somewhat closer match to the true speed of the space station.

The video above documents a minute of flight heading east from the Pacific over the Canadian West Coast, heading toward southern Alberta near Calgary. I love watching the ripples and flashes of the green aurora over Canada — seasoned with a dash of red from the atomic oxygen that exists at higher altitudes. Why is there red as well as green in the aurora? We've addressed that question before, but this Aurora FAQ from the University of Alaska provides a quick explanation.

Here are a couple more videos, tracking the space station's flight over the U.S. East Coast as well as central North America. But you don't have to stop here. Visit NASA's Gateway, which offers still photos from the space station in addition to the videos, and check out the YouTube channel for NASA Crew Earth Observations. My favorite places for space imagery also include the Fragile Oasis Facebook page, NASA astronaut Ron Garan's Google+ page and Jason Major's Lights in the Dark blog.

If auroras, atmospheric phenomena and solar activity are your thing, you can't do much better than SpaceWeather.com, which is keeping track of lovely aurora pictures like this one from Chad Blakley at Abisko National Park in Sweden. Be sure to check out Blakley's Lights Over Lapland website while you're at it.

Chad Blakley / Lights Over Lapland

Photographer Chad Blakley captured this view of the northern lights over Sweden's Abisko National Park on Feb. 6. "The lights started around 6:00 p.m. and continued into the very early hours of the morning," Blakley told SpaceWeather.com. Check out Blakley's gallery on SpaceWeather.com for still more stunning views.

AuroraMAX / CSA

The rippling northern lights share the skies with a nearly full moon over Yellowknife in Canada's Northern Territories early today, as seen by the Canadian Space Agency's AuroraMAX wide-angle camera. To keep on top of northern Canada's aurora extravaganza, check the AuroraMAX website and Twitpic account.

Update for 3:25 p.m. ET Feb. 8: I originally wrote that the pace of the latest videos from the space station was nearly a true match to the station's orbital speed, but after double-checking with the folks at Johnson Space Center, I'd say it's more accurate to call them a "truer" match than usual. The videos were assembled from still photographs that were captured by a digital camera at the rate of one frame per second, rather than the usual frame every three seconds. That makes for a slower-paced video, but not a real-time speed, because the Web video plays at a rate that's more than one frame per second.

M ore auroral glories:

• Planet looks back at northern lights
• Auroras spark awe across the north
• Northern lights go way, way south
• Speed through Lapland's lights
• Beautiful blasts from solar storms
• Get a video view of Canada's aurora
• Slideshow: The best of the northern lights
• Cosmic Log's auroral archive

What could be more marvelous than seeing microscopic wonders at super-close range? How about watching those wonders at work, through the magic of time-lapse photography? That's the kind of wow factor that Nikon Instruments was going for with their first-ever Small World in Motion Photomicrography Competition — and it looks as if the winning entries have hit the mark.

Top honors go to Anna Franz, a researcher at the University of Oxford's Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, for her video showing how ink makes its way through the blood vessels of a chick embryo.

Anna Franz / Oriel College / Oxford

Dark ink outlines the blood system of a chick embryo in this frame from a video created by Anna Franz of Oriel College and the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. Franz carefully injected the ink into an artery within the egg and used a stereo microscope to track its flow through the vessels. The resulting video won top honors in Nikon's first Small World in Motion Photomicrography Competition. Click on the image to play the movie.

To create the time-lapse video, Franz cut a window into a chicken egg to expose the 72-hour-old embryo, and then carefully injected ink into its artery under a stereo microscope to visualize the blood system. Believe it or not, this was the first time Franz used this technique. She not only got it right; she also captured the blood's blossoming on video.

"This movie not only demonstrates the power of the heart and the complexity of vasculature of the chick embryo, but also reflects the beauty of nature's design," Franz said in today's announcement about the award-winners.

Second place goes to Dominik Paquet's glittering time-lapse view of mitochondria moving through sensory neurons in the tail of a zebrafish larva. Mitochondria are the energy-producing powerhouses of the cell, and play a vital role in sparking neural activity. This movie was created in the course of Paquet's research into the molecular and cellular pathologies associated with dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Paquet and his team at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Disease in Munich were studying how problems with the transport of cellular components can affect nerve cells. Paquet says this video may represent the first-ever example of live imaging of mitochondrial transport in the nerve cells of an intact, unmodified vertebrate.

Dominik Paquet / German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases / Rockefeller U.

Medical researcher Dominik Paquet captured a time-lapse movie showing the movement of mitochondria through sensory neurons in the tail of a zebrafish larva. The movie won second place in Nikon's Small World in Motion contest. Click on the image to play the movie.

A microscopic crustacean known as a Daphnia or water flea plays with a Volvox, a spherical type of green algae, in a frame from a video that won third place in Nikon's Small World in Motion Photomicrography Competition. Click on the image to play the video.

The third-place winner is totally for fun. German vaccine researcher Ralf Wagner nabbed a Daphnia water flea from his garden pond and put it on his microscope slide for study. In Wagner's charming video, the water flea can be seen batting around a spherical Volvox green-algae colony as if it were a beach ball. Wagner acknowledges that the video doesn't document a scientific breakthrough; it just shows a microscopic creature interacting with its environment. It also shows off Wagner's flair for microscopy. A still image showing a similar scene was recognized as an image of distinction in the 2011 Nikon Small World contest. Wagner hopes that such pictures will remind viewers how much fun science can be, and perhaps inspire some of them to take up its study.

Nikon Instruments has been sponsoring the annual Small World contest for still photomicrography for 37 years — and Eric Flem, the company's communications manager, said the video contest was a natural outgrowth of the tradition. "We receive spectacular images for the Nikon Small World Competition, and it is with great excitement that we expand the competition to accommodate moving images and time-lapse photography," he said.

More than 200 contest entries were received for judging by Kurt Thorn, director of the Nikon Imaging Center at the University of California at San Francisco; and Michael Davidson, director of the Optical and Magneto-Optical Imaging Center at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University. In addition to the top three videos, the judges recognized 11 other entries with honorable mentions.

For the full playlist, click on over to the Nikon Small World website. You can also check in with Nikon Small World's Facebook page and its Twitter account, @NikonSmallWorld.

More small wonders:

• Nikon Small World's top 20 for 2011
• Nikon Small World's top 20 for 2010
• The world within a drop of water
• Greatest hits from Nikon Small World
• Olympus BioScapes' top 10 for 2011
• Olympus BioScapes' top 10 for 2010
• Olympus BioScapes' top 10 for 2009
• Visualizing science in 2011
• Visualizing science in 2010
• Visualizing science in 2009

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor, and was on the judging panel for the 2011 Nikon Small World Competition. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Slideshow: Stunning scientific sights

Click through prize-winning photos and illustrations from the 2011 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

Launch slideshow

Visualizing science has come a long way from the days of overhead projectors and boxes of microscope slides — and to see just how far we've come, all you need to do is take a look at this year's top entries in the International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

This is the ninth year for the competition, which is sponsored by the journal Science and the National Science Foundation. The 212 entries, received from 33 countries, focused on subjects ranging from transmission electron microscopy to the cosmic web that stretches across the universe.

Expert judges selected their top entries in five categories: photography, illustrations, informational posters and graphics, interactive games, and videos. But the general public got in on the judging as well, casting 3,200 online votes to select "People's Choice" award winners.

"The talent of these award winners is remarkable," Monica Bradford, Science's executive editor, said in a news release. "These winners communicate science in a manner that not only captures your attention but in many instances strives to look at different ways to solve scientific problems through their varied art forms."

Check out our slideshow, featuring the winners in the photography, illustration, poster/graphic and interactive game categories.

A mere slideshow doesn't give you the full flavor of the interactive games, however, so you'll really have to give them a try separately. The top-rated game is Foldit, a protein-folding puzzle game that has led to published research. We've written quite a bit about Foldit already: Check out our reports about the AIDS-like virus puzzle that was solved by Foldit players, and the molecular "recipes" that gamers came up with.

Three more games merited honorable mention: Meta!Blast 3D, an educational game about cellular biology; Build-a-Body, which lets players put together virtual organ system; and Powers of Minus Ten, which lets players zoom into the structure of virtual cells. Velu the Welder, a game from India that actually trains players to do welding, won the People's Choice award.

Before you get too involved in the game-playing, take a look at these winning videos:

Here's the list of winning entries in the other four categories of the 2011 challenge:

Photography: First place goes to Bryan William Jones, University of Utah, Moran Eye Center, for "Metabolomic Eye."

Honorable mention: Robert Rock Belliveau for "Microscopic Image of Trichomes on the Skin of an Immature Cucumber."

People's Choice: Babak Anasori, Michael Naguib, Yury Gogotsi, and Michel W. Barsoum of Drexel University for "The Cliff of the Two-Dimensional World."

Illustration: Three honorable mentions were cited. Emiko Paul and Quade Paul (Echo Medical Media) as well as Ron Gamble (UAB Insight) for "Tumor Death-Cell Receptors on Breast Cancer Cell." Joel Brehm of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Office of Research & Economic Development for "Variable-Diameter Carbon Nanotubes." Konstantin Poelke and Konrad Polthier of Free University Berlin for "Exploring Complex Functions using Domain Coloring." People's Choice: Andrew Noske and Thomas Deerinck (National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego) as well as Horng Ou and Clodagh O'Shea (Salk Institute) for "Separation of a Cell."

Informational posters and graphics: First place goes to Miguel Angel Aragon-Calvo (Johns Hopkins University), Julieta Aguilera and Mark SubbaRao (Adler Planetarium) for "The Cosmic Web."

Honorable mention: Ivan Konstantinov, Yury Stefanov, Alexander Kovalevsky and Anastasya Bakulina of Visual Science for "The Ebola Virus."

People's Choice: Fabian de Kok-Mercado, Victoria Wahl-Jensen and Laura Bollinger of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases IRF for "Transmission Electron Microscopy: Structure, Function & 3D Reconstruction."

Interactive games: First place: Seth Cooper, David Baker, Zoran Popović, Firas Khatib, Jeff Flatten, Kefan Xu, Dun-Yu Hsiao, and Riley Adams of the Center for Game Science at the University of Washington for "Foldit."

Three honorable mentions were cited: W. Schneller, P.J. Campbell, M. Stenerson, D. Bassham, and E.S. Wurtele of Iowa State University for "Meta!Blast 3D Interactive Application for Cell and Metabolic Biology. Level 1: The Cell." Jeremy Friedberg, Nicole Husain, Ian Wood, Genevieve Brydson, Wensi Sheng, Lorraine Trecroce, Kariane St-Denis, David Rowe, Ruby Pajares, Arij Al Chawaf, Shaun Rana and Nancy Reilly of Spongelab Interactive for "Build-a-Body." Laura Lynn Gonzalez of Green-Eye Visualization for "Powers of Minus Ten."

People's Choice: Muralitharan Vengadasalam, Ganesh Venkat, Vignesh Palanimuthu, Fabian Herrera, and Ashok Maharaja of Tata Consultancy Services for "Velu the Welder."

More scientific visions to enjoy:

• Visions of science go viral: 2010's winners
• The top sights of science: 2009's winners
• Science that you can see: 2008's winners 
• Science's best sights: 2007's winners
• More visions of science: 2006's winners
• Visualization challenge: 2005's winners
• A scientific visual feast: 2004's winners
• Visualization challenge: 2003's winners
  

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

ESA

This picture combines a far-infrared view from the Herschel Space Observatory with an X-ray view from XMM-Newton to show how the hot young stars detected by the X-ray observations are sculpting and interacting with the surrounding ultra-cool gas and dust, which provide the critical material for star formation.

The Hubble Space Telescope's "Pillars of Creation" picture is arguably the best-known astronomical image of the 20th century, but can you spot the pillars in the 21st-century version? Those well-known towers of gas and dust are dwarfed by the full majesty of the Eagle Nebula in a view that's based on far-infrared observations from the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, plus X-ray readings from the XMM-Newton probe.

NASA / ESA / STScI / ASU

This 1995 Hubble Space Telescope image of the "Pillars of Creation" is probably the most famous astronomical image of the 20th century. Taken in visible light using a combination of SII/H-alpha and OIII filters, it shows a part of the Eagle Nebula where new stars are forming. The tallest pillar is around 4 light-years high.

The Eagle Nebula, 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Serpens, is one of the closest cradles of starbirth. Radiation from a young star cluster known as NGC 6611 is blasting away at the surrounding pillars of gas and dust —and sparking new star systems inside clumps known as evaporating gaseous globules, or EGGs.

Hubble's visible-light image, captured in 1995, showed the pillars in detail. It also provided an iconic image of cosmic structure for ages to come. But it couldn't reveal exactly what was inside the EGGs' dusty sheaths.

In 2001, a near-infrared image from the ISAAC instrument, at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope facility in Chile, cut through the dust and revealed some of the infant stars within their EGGs.

Researchers determined that 11 of the 73 EGGs in the Hubble image clearly had stars associated with them. Only one of these stars had been previously been seen in the Hubble images, and another five EGGs were noted as possibly containing stars.

VLT / ISAAC / AIP / ESO

The 8.2-meter VLT's ANTU telescope imaged the famous "Pillars of Creation" region and its surroundings in near-infrared using the ISAAC instrument. This enabled astronomers to penetrate the obscuring dust in their search to detect newly formed stars. The near-infrared results showed that 11 of the Pillars' 73 evaporating gaseous globules (or EGGs) possibly contained stars, and that the tips of the pillars contain stars and nebulosity not seen in the Hubble image

The new far-infrared view from Herschel provides even more detail about the structure of the pillars and the young stars within. Meanwhile, the view from XMM-Newton highlights the points of strong X-ray emission within the nebula. The European Space Agency says the new imagery supports the view that one of the stars in the NGC 6611 clusters went supernova, sending out a shock wave that is about to tear the pillars apart.

In fact, it's probably already happened — but because of the distance separating us from the nebula, we just haven't seen it yet. Astronomers expect that we'll witness the destruction of the Pillars of Creation sometime in the next few hundred years. So enjoy the view while you can.

Could you make out the pillars in the top picture? This video puts all the imagery in perspective:

More about the Pillars of Creation:

• Sun's baby twin spotted in the Pillars
• The Eagle Nebula's dazzling star cluster
• Telescope sees 'Mountains of Creation'
• Slideshow: All-time top 10 astronomy pictures

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

Guillaume Blanchard / ESO

Comet Lovejoy streaks through the pre-dawn skies above the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile on Dec. 22.

If anyone questioned whether Comet Lovejoy would become the star of the season — and a lot of people did — the pictures of the past few days have removed any doubt. In the Southern Hemisphere, the death-defying comet is truly this year's "Star of Wonder."

Not only do we have an amazing video of the long-tailed iceball rising from the horizon, as seen from the International Space Station, we also have the stunning pictures and video released today by the European Southern Observatory. Skywatchers at the ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile captured the comet against the glittering backdrop of the Milky Way.

"For me, this comet is a Christmas present to the people who will stay at Paranal over Christmas," said Guillaume Blanchard, who snapped a picture of dawn at Paranal with the Milky Way and Lovejoy dominating the sky.

Gabriel Brammer put together a time-lapse sequence of the comet rising just before the sun. For devotees of the night sky, it's the latest must-see video. The clip also features the pencil-thin laser beam that Paranal's Very Large Telescope uses as a guide star for its astronomical observations. Expand the video to full screen to increase the awesomeness.

"With this spectacular sequence of the 2011 Christmas Comet Lovejoy, ESO would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year," the observatory's staff says in today's image advisory.

Amen to that!

More about Comet Lovejoy:

• 'Amazing' view of comet from space
• Lovely Lovejoy! Comet shot at sunrise
• Sun rips comet's tail during close encounter
• Still more pictures from IceinSpace.com.au

One of the most enjoyable parts of Santa's job must be to see the world from on high on Christmas Eve — but thanks to the astronauts on the International Space Station, we can get a similar view on video. Over the past year, the space station's night flights have produced some fantastic pictures of city lights and auroral displays. This video puts together some of the latest clips posted to NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

You're actually looking at five time-lapse clips, strung together for a west-to-east journey:

• The first five seconds are from a trip heading up the U.S. East Coast on Dec. 11, with bright city lights strung up all the way from Boston to New York to Philadelphia to Washington. You'll notice a green auroral glow in the upper left corner.

• The northern lights are the main attraction in the clip running from 0:05 to 0:25. This was the view looking north on Dec. 11 as the station was heading from Nova Scotia to northern Italy.

• Our virtual sleigh travels over Africa, Europe and Asia from 0:25 to 0:50, with the camera pointed toward the northeast. Among the sights from Dec. 4 are the Iberian Peninsula and north Africa, England and France, the Baltic Sea, Moscow and central Russia, and atmospheric airglow that gives way to the beginnings of sunrise in the east. Once again, there's a taste of northern lights in the upper left corner.

• The next clip, from 0:50 to 1:13, chronicles an Oct. 21 pass that begins at the coast of France and heads right across Europe. A couple of lightning flashes can be seen over Italy, then the space station makes its way across Turkey and onward to the Arabian Peninsula.

• My favorite part of the trip runs from 1:13 to the end, and takes in a swath of our planet from Central Asia to South Australia. This video was assembled from pictures taken during the space station's night flight on Oct. 29. Here's how the folks at NASA's Johnson Space Center describe the view:

"The video begins just northwest of the Tibetan Plateau, where the greenish glow is from airglow. The line separating the plateau and the city lights to the right of track are the Himalaya Mountains, with cities like New Delhi, Lahore, and Islamabad standing out. Continuing down track, one can spot the brightly lit city of Calcutta just right of track before flying over Burma and Thailand. Thailand's capital city, Bangkok, is the brightest-lit city in the video. The white lights of the city can be seen nearby the green and purple lights on the Gulf of Thailand, which are fishing boats and oil rigs. Once across the Gulf of Thailand, cities like Kuala Lumpur and Singapore stand out right of track before flying over the island of Java (long, thin island downtrack from Singapore). Near the end of the video the ISS flies southeast over Australia and lightning storms, and the Milky Way can be seen rising in the sky."

There's no soundtrack for the video, but feel free to play Christmas music in the background. You could fire up some "Space Age Santa Claus," or take a listen to the first live music broadcast from orbit: "Jingle Bells." Archive.org has the audio recording from 1965's Gemini 7/6 mission. The harmonica and jingling bells come in around 2:10 in the clip.

And now for something completely different: Check out this sleigh ride over Mars:

Looking for more night flyovers? Here's a sampling:

• 'Amazing' view of comet from space
• The best of NASA's night lights
• See the world from space ... in 60 seconds
• Fly over the southern lights in the space station

And if there's anything you've missed from the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, here's your chance to catch up. We'll present our final image from the calendar on Christmas Day:

• The full Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Dec. 1: An ornament in outer space
• Dec. 2: The masses in Mecca
• Dec. 3: Santa's shrinking domain
• Dec. 4: The monster of Madagascar
• Dec. 5: Antarctica stripped naked
• Dec. 6: Streaking for home
• Dec. 7: Pearl Harbor from above, 1941-2011
• Dec. 8: The rise and fall of the Dead Sea
• Dec. 9: How an eclipse dims Earth
• Dec. 10: Psychedelic storm
• Dec. 11: Beauty of the Inland Sea
• Dec. 12: Drone-spotting stirs up debate
• Dec. 13: Light up your St. Lucy's Day
• Dec. 14: Satellite spots Chinese aircraft carrier
• Dec. 15: Hooray for Hollywood
• Dec. 16: Olympics under construction
• Dec. 17: Mystery in the Gobi Desert
• Dec. 18: Glow over Miami
• Dec. 19: North Korea's dark ages
• Dec. 20: Happy Hanukkah from space
• Dec. 21: Season's tiltings
• Dec. 22: Circle of power
• Dec. 23: North Pole revealed
• Hubble calendar, from The Atlantic's In Focus
• 2011 Zooniverse Advent calendar

Colin Legg

Australian photographer Colin Legg captured this photograph of Comet Lovejoy's tail flaring up from the horizon just before sunrise Wednesday.

We already know that Comet Lovejoy is a survivor, thanks to its death-defying spin around the sun last week, but now we're finding out it's a show-off as well. Here's a glorious picture of the comet's double tail, captured just before sunrise in Western Australia.

The picture is part of a must-see video sequence created by Colin Legg, who set up his camera looking southeast across the Mandurah Estuary, roughly 38 miles (60 kilometers) south of Perth. Legg has a knack for doing time-lapse photography of the night sky.

In a rushed email, Legg told me he made a last-minute decision to try taking pictures of the comet, based on reports that the tail was visible to the naked eye during morning twilight.

"Drove from Perth to Mandurah, slept in vehicle until 2:30 a.m., then set up two cameras, one for time-lapse, one for still images," he wrote. "Kept shooting till sunrise, then drove back to Perth. Hoping to do the same thing again tonight. First opportunity in almost six years to image and view a bright comet. Only visible in Southern Hemisphere while still bright. Last good comet in south was Comet McNaught. I was still shooting film back then."

The picture shows two tails: The fainter tail consists of ionized gas that is pushed almost directly away from the sun by the solar wind, while the brighter tail is made up of heavier material that more closely follows the comet's orbit. Check out this clickable Flash graphic to learn more about the anatomy of a comet.

Although the comet was shot at sunrise today, Lovejoy isn't finished just yet: "The visibility of both tails could improve in the days ahead as the comet moves away from the sun and the background sky darkens accordingly," SpaceWeather.com's Tony Phillips writes. "Early-rising sky watchers should be alert for this rare apparition."

Check out SpaceWeather.com for more of that lovely Lovejoy imagery — but first, take a look at Legg's Vimeo video, which brings the nearly full moon into the picture. Go full-screen HD for the best view:

Cometary hits and misses:

• 'Doomsday' comet just fades away
• Hubble probes a comet's heart
• NASA probe delivers glowing views of comet

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA

The lights of the Florida Peninsula and the rest of the southeastern U.S. glow in this picture taken from the International Space Station on Nov. 24.

Florida's city lights shine brightly in this night view from the International Space Station — but there's a completely different kind of glow that frames the edge of our planet. It's known as "airglow," the faint greenish radiance high up in Earth's atmosphere.

You might think airglow comes from the reflected glare of city lights, but it's actually a photochemical reaction caused by the sun's ultraviolet radiation.

During the day, that radiation breaks apart molecules of oxygen and other chemicals, exciting them into a higher energy state. During the night, the molecules recombine, radiating the excess energy as light. As a result, the atmosphere glows in a thin region around 60 miles up.

The glow is so faint that it can't be seen when you're looking up into the sky, or when astronauts are looking directly down from space. But when space travelers look toward the edge of Earth's disk at night, they can see the permanent aurora at the horizon. For more about airglow, check out this explanation from the University at Albany's Bob Keesee, or this one from Discovery News' Jason Major.

We've seen some great views of airglow from the space station over the past year: For more examples, check out these archived PhotoBlog items, and keep an eye on NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth as well as astronaut Ron Garan's postings on Google+ for "Fragile Oasis."

The hits just keep on coming from the space station, and you can expect to see much more when the station's crew is back at its full strength of six astronauts.

Three new crew members are due to arrive this week, just in time for Christmas. In this video, space station commander Dan Burbank reflects on the new arrivals, the holidays and our "indescribably beautiful" planet:

The space station crew's sidelong glance at the Florida Keys, the Florida Peninsula and the rest of the southeastern United States was captured from orbit on Nov. 24. It's today's offering from the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which highlights views of Earth from space every day from now until Christmas. Catch up on these previous gems from the calendar:

• The full Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
• Dec. 1: An ornament in outer space
• Dec. 2: The masses in Mecca
• Dec. 3: Santa's shrinking domain
• Dec. 4: The monster of Madagascar
• Dec. 5: Antarctica stripped naked
• Dec. 6: Streaking for home
• Dec. 7: Pearl Harbor from above, 1941-2011
• Dec. 8: The rise and fall of the Dead Sea
• Dec. 9: How an eclipse dims Earth
• Dec. 10: Psychedelic storm
• Dec. 11: Beauty of the Inland Sea
• Dec. 12: Drone-spotting stirs up debate
• Dec. 13: Light up your St. Lucy's Day
• Dec. 14: Satellite spots Chinese aircraft carrier
• Dec. 15: Hooray for Hollywood
• Dec. 16: Olympics under construction
• Dec. 17: Mystery in the Gobi Desert
• Hubble calendar, from The Atlantic's In Focus
• 2011 Zooniverse Advent calendar