Showcased in this inaugural edition of Nature’s Images of the month: images from the hugely popular awards run by the Wellcome Trust in London; a rocket launch into an aurora; mummies with cheese; and the magnificence of the Milky Way.

GREECE is the word

The Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska was the stage for this rocket launch on 3 March. The aurora in the background is not just a pleasing aesthetic coincidence; the launch is part of the Ground-to-Rocket Electrodynamics–Electrons Correlative Experiment (GREECE) mission, which aims to study the atmospheric phenomenon. Credit: Christopher Perry/NASA

Wellcome Image Awards 2014

See more images at the awards site.

Drop it

Understanding the formation and movement of rapidly moving droplets can be troublesome when they are just 26 micrometres across and move at 3 metres per second. Detlef Lohse at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and his team built this composite picture using flashes of laser light just 8 nanoseconds in length to illuminate tiny droplets of silicone oil. Credit: Mark-Jan van der Meulen & Arjan van der Bos/Univ. Twente

Read more about this work in this Research Highlight.

Mars in pastels

In this map from Mars, white and red show elevated ground, with blue and purple indicating the deepest areas, allowing researchers to understand the terrain. The image, released earlier this month, was captured last year by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express team. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin

Mummies got cheese

This female mummy from China was found together with samples of the oldest cheese ever discovered. The lumps provide solid evidence for a lactose-free dairy dating back 3,800 years, according to research published on 18 February. Credit: Yusheng Liu

Read more about this work in this Research Highlight.

Engage with the Milky Way

More than 2 million images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope were needed to create this huge composite picture of the Milky Way. The 20-gigapixel infrared image was released this month and shows more than half of all the stars in the Milky Way.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GLIMPSE Team