FAVORITE IMAGES OF THE WEEK - 20

UFO GALAXY?

So here's the thing about this galaxy, which is otherwise known as NGC 2683. It's a regular spiral galaxy, about 35 million light-years from Earth. But given our (read: Hubble's) vantage point, we see it from the side, so it has a sort of a flying saucer shape. But that's the only reason we call it the UFO galaxy! If we were elsewhere it'd be a regular spiral galaxy. [via Livescience]

ESA/Hubble & NASA

SNAIL MASSAGE

The snail massage, available in Siberian Russia, is believed to help eliminate wrinkles and make skin appear more youthful. We can't speak to that, though this picture did gross out a few of our less slime-tolerant writers.

Ilya Naymushin/Reuters

PINK PANTHER, SORT OF

Couple things wrong with calling this a naturally pink panther: First, it's not a panther/cougar/puma/mountain lion--it's a leopard. Second, it's claimed to be pink, but I'm not so sure about it from this photo. It definitely looks a little blushed, but...what do you guys think? Read more here.

Courtesy of Deon De Villiers of SafaGraphics

PASTELS IN ORION

The watery pastels of this false-color photo of the Orion Nebula come from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. All those little dots are baby stars--Orion is a nursery of sorts. Read more here.

NASA

TINY ANCIENT MAMMOTH

This is the world's best-preserved baby mammoth carcass (that we know of). It's about 42,000 years old, and currently on display in Hong Kong. For more photos like this, check out American Photo.

Aaron Tam/AFP/Getty

SPACE MARGARITA

Not sure why this satellite is shaped like a margarita glass, but NASA's funding an exploration into its ability to harvest sunlight and beam the energy back down to Earth via microwaves. Read more here.

John Mankins via PhysOrg

MAPPING WIKIPEDIA

Mapping Wikipedia is a project to map out where (and in what language) Wikipedia's writers are writing from. It's fascinating, actually--why are people writing Arabic articles in New York, Boston, and DC, but hardly at all in Philadelphia? Why are Italians writing so many more English-language articles than Spaniards? Play with it here.

Mapping Wikipedia