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)

A small section of the expanding remains of the Veil Nebula, a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago. The entire nebula is 110 light-years across, covering six full moons on the sky as seen from Earth, and resides about 2,100 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. (Photo by Reuters/NASA/ESA/Hubble)

Tomasz Alen Kopera, Polish painter, was born in Kozuchow, Poland. He attended the University of Technology in Wroclaw, where he gained a degree in Engineering.

North Korean soldiers wave along the Yalu River, near the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite to the Chinese border city of Dandong October 7, 2014. (Photo by Jacky Chen/Reuters)

Polish artist Agnieszka Pilat poses with the artwork of her robot painting dogs – Basia Spot and Bunny Spot – who have become artists painting on canvases with their paws, at the launch of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Triennial 2023 in Melbourne on April 5, 2023. Pilat works with the Boston Dynamics dogs, training them to paint autonomously through AI technology individually and collaboratively, and will be part of more than 100 local and international artists, designers and collectives presenting at the exhibition opening in December. (Photo by William West/AFP Photo)

The picture dated July 8, 2023 shows the Typhoon performing at the RAF Waddington Families Day in Lincolnshire, UK. A number of iconic planes took to the skies in the action-packed day for service personnel and their friends and families. (Photo by Claire Hartley/Bav Media)

Flames burn in a field in Capaci, near Palermo, in Sicily, southern Italy, Wednesday, July 26, 2023. On the island of Sicily, two people were found dead Tuesday in a home burned by a wildfire that temporarily shut down Palermo's international airport, according to Italian news reports. Regional officials said 55 fires were active on Sicily, amid temperatures in the 40s Celsius. (Photo by Alberto Lo Bianco/LaPresse via AP Photo)

Indian army training cadets perform “Kalaripayattu”, an ancient martial art from Kerala, during a combined display ahead of their graduation ceremony, at the Officers Training Academy (OTA), in Chennai, India on September 8, 2023. A combined display of training proficiency was organized at the OTA as a prelude to a passing-out parade of cadets. The combined display marks the culmination of the adventure training and showcases the skills and expertise of armed forces display teams. (Photo by Idrees Mohammed/EPA/EFE)