Soap Bubble Structures by Kym Cox. Bubbles optimise space and minimise their surface area for a given volume of air. This phenomenon makes them a useful tool in many areas of research, in particular, materials science and “packing” – how things fit together. Bubble walls drain under gravity, thin at the top, thick at the bottom, which interferes with travelling lightwaves to create bands of colour. Black spots show the wall is too thin for interference colours, indicating the bubble is about to burst. (Photo by Kym Cox/2019 Science Photographer of the Year/RPS)

American actress Paris Jackson pulls faces at photographers during the “Melbourne Cup” race day festivities in Melbourne, Australia on November 7, 2017. (Photo by Media-Mode/Splash News and Pictures)

A general view of the ghost town of a former Soviet military radar station near Skrunda, Latvia, April 9, 2016. (Photo by Ints Kalnins/Reuters)

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn's north pole. In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane's eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon. Photo: The spinning vortex of Saturn's north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. (Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

Sunset is seen through smoke from the Wallow fire June 8, 2011 in Springerville, Arizona. Hundreds of thousands of acres have burned in eastern Arizona prompting evacuations by residents. Smoke loomed over the twin towns of Eager and Springerville, home to about 7,000 people north of the fire. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)

A woman in Kimono poses for photos in front of mimosa and cherry blossom trees in Tokyo on March 8, 2024. (Photo by Yuichi Yamazaki/AFP Photo)

The Perseid Meteor Shower seen over The Scorhill Stone Circle in Dartmoor, Devon on August 2, 2016. (Photo by John Baker/SWNS.com)

Aurorae category runner-up: Lone Tree under a Scandinavian Aurora by Tom Archer (UK). The photographer decided to explore the area around the hotel on a very crisp -35C evening in Finnish Lapland. When he found this tree, he decided to wait for the misty conditions to change and could not believe his luck when the sky cleared and the aurora came out in the perfect spot. Archer spent about an hour photographing it before his camera started to lock up because of the harsh conditions, but by then he was happy to call it a night. (Photo by Tom Archer/2020 Astronomy Photographer of the Year)