These poignant portraits look to shine awareness on the plight of some of the world’s most endangered ecosystems and species of wildlife. The images combine animals, art and celebrity, with Asia's top models posing with the likes of rhinos, giraffes, leopards and marine life. Here: Mikki Yao with an Asian Elephant. (Photo by Sean Lee-Davies/Caters News)

The Great Picture” is a black and white panoramic print of Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, an old military outpost. The print measures 111 feet wide by 32 feet high on seamless white muslin cloth. (Photo by Caters News)

China has sent its first woman into space on a mission to dock with an orbiting station, the latest step in an ambitious programme to go to the moon and on to Mars.

Photo: China's first female astronaut Liu Yang, waves during a sending off ceremony before she departs for the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft rocket launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Jiuquan, China, Saturday, June 16, 2012. China will send its first woman and two other astronauts into space Saturday to work on a temporary space station for about a week, in a key step toward becoming only the third nation to set up a permanent base in orbit. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

Museum employee Victoria views a giant grouper fish specimen at the Natural History Museum in west London March 25, 2015. It forms part of a new exhibition, “Coral Reefs: Secret Cities of the Sea”, featuring a panoramic virtual dive and over 250 specimens from the Museum's coral, fish and marine invertebrate collection, which opens on March 27. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

More than 700 underwater images were submitted for the 2012 Annual Underwater Photography Contest, hosted by the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science. This year, for the first time, the University of Miami set up a “Fan Favorite” category for its underwater photo competition. Internet users could vote for their favorite among five pictures. Todd Aki's photo of a jellyfish took the prize, snaring 599 of the 1,221 votes cast. (Photo by Todd Aki)

Penitentes, or nieves penitentes (Spanish for “penitent-shaped snows”), are a snow formation found at high altitudes. They take the form of tall thin blades of hardened snow or ice, closely spaced with the blades oriented towards the general direction of the sun.

An Orthodox priest conducts a blessing in front of the Soyuz TMA-20M for the next International Space Station (ISS) crew, comprised of Jeff Williams of the U.S. and Oleg Skriprochka and Alexey Ovchinin of Russia, at the launchpad at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, March 17, 2016, ahead of its launch scheduled on March 19. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

A member of the Air Force's Wings of Blue Parachute Demonstration Team salutes as he jumps out of an aircraft, during the opening ceremony of Aviation Nation 2017 Nellis Air and Space Expo at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., November 10, 2017. (Photo by Senior Airman Kevin Tanenbaum/Reuters/U.S. Air Force)