Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

Girls during a class at the Teire Irish dance school in Moscow, Russia on March 15, 2019. (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin/TASS)

Penguins Momo and Omochi are seen while the projection mapping images is being cast during a media preview for their free online animal shows for children and families staying at home during Golden Week holidays due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdown, at the Aqua Park Shinagawa in Tokyo, Japan on April 30, 2020. (Photo by Issei Kato/Reuters)

Yan Anyu or Miss Cream rides in a taxi in Shanghai on June 13, 2020, as she makes her way to a bar in the city of Shanghai to make her first presentation as a drag queen. Attitudes toward alternative lifestyles are slowly softening in China, and members of a small but growing drag community have begun to step into the spotlight. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP Photo)

Local residents fight to collect free drinking water from municipal corporation tanker on a hot summer day on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India June 1, 2016. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

A fireball erupts from a 16-inch gun on the battleship USS Wisconsin during a live fire exercise in the Persian Gulf, October 13, 1990. The ship is in the Gulf as part of Operation Desert Shield. (Photo by John Gaps III/AP Photo)

A child dressed as a cat takes part in the Children's Halloween day parade at Washington Square Park in the Manhattan borough of New York October 31, 2015. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

A retired man (L) looks toward two girls wearing miniskirts, July 13, 1969 in Nice, France. (Photo by AFP Photo)