These spectacular images of the universe are the finalists in the 2016 CWAS “David Malin” awards. The annual competition, which celebrates the best astronomy images taken by Australian photographers, is part of AstroFest 2016. The winners will be announced on 16 July. An associated exhibition opens the following day at the CSIRO Parkes Observatory visitors centre, and a second exhibition will also travel to selected venues around Australia. Here: Mars and its Rival Antares and the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. (Photo by Phil Hart/CWAS/The Guardian)

In this photo taken Sunday, October 5, 2014, a library official shows a 13th-century German prayer book containing the earliest evidence of the Yiddish language, at Israel's National Library in Jerusalem. This week, Israel's National Library gave The Associated Press a rare peek at a selection of rare historical manuscripts in its collection. (Photo by Sebastian Scheiner/AP Photo)

An artist's impression of a growing supermassive black hole located in the early Universe is seen in this NASA handout illustration released on June 15, 2011. Using the deepest X-ray image ever taken, astronomers found the first direct evidence that massive black holes were common in the early universe. This discovery from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory shows that very young black holes grew more aggressively than previously thought, in tandem with the growth of their host galaxies. (Photo by Reuters/NASA/Chandra X-Ray Observatory/A.Hobart)

Syrians gather during an evacuation operation of rebel fighters and their families from rebel-held neighbourhoods on December 15, 2016 in the embattled city of Aleppo. A convoy of ambulances and buses left rebel territory in Aleppo in the first evacuations under a deal for opposition fighters to leave the city after years of fighting. The rebel withdrawal will pave the way for President Bashar al-Assad's forces to reclaim complete control of Syria's second city, handing the regime its biggest victory in more than five years of civil war. (Photo by Karam Al-Masri/AFP Photo)

A man crosses from a pirogue to another pirogue during the annual boat regatta in Yauri, Kebbi State, on February 15, 2025. The regatta festival started about 200 years ago as a display of naval strength of the Gungu people, where the Gungu warriors annually attacked dangerous hippopotamus that were destroying farmlands. Warriors would board various sizes of canoes with different types of weapons to attack the animal on the River Niger. This required expertise in canoe paddling and naval warfare. It also served as training exercise for upcoming Gungu warriors. (Photo by Toyin Adedokun/AFP Photo)

The First U.S. Spacewalk – Gemini 4 Ed White made the United States' first spacewalk on June 3, 1965 during the Gemini 4 mission. The extra-vehicular activity (EVA) started at 19:45 UT (3:45 p.m. EDT) on the third orbit when White opened his hatch and used the hand-held manuevering oxygen-jet gun to push himself out of the capsule. (Photo by NASA)

Smoke rises from a house days after part of the ground it was resting on collapsed into Lake Whitney, Texas in this June 13, 2014 file photo. I was covering the controlled burn of a house slowly falling into Lake Whitney due to the decaying cliff underneath. Asked to take photos from an aerial perspective, an instructor and I took off from Grand Prairie Municipal Airport around 9am. The burn, scheduled to start an hour later, was delayed. I love flying, but patience proved challenging as circling for nearly three hours gets boring fast. Once the fire started we only had 15 minutes to take photos because the plane was booked at 1pm. The owners invested their retirement savings in the house and were even advised by geologists that the ground was stable. To watch your investment literally go up in flames must take its toll emotionally. The owners said they don't expect their insurance to cover the loss. (Photo and caption by Brandon Wade/Reuters)

A displaced Yemeni woman from Hodeida fills water containers at a make-shift camp in a village in the northern district of Abs in the country's Hajjah province, on May 9, 2019. The Yemeni conflict has triggered what the United Nations describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with 3.3 million people still displaced and 24.1 million in need of aid. (Photo by Essa Ahmed/AFP Photo)