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 Minion character dressed in a Christmas theme is pictured in Times Square during unseasonably warm weather on Christmas Eve in the Manhattan borough of New York, December 24, 2015. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

Children eat watermelons to meet the “beginning of autumn” at a kindergarten in Handan, China on August 7, 2015. Chinese tradition to eat watermelons or peaches before that day symbolises “biting away summer”. The solar term ‘beginning of autumn’ falls on 8 August this year. (Photo by Xinhua/REX Shutterstock)

A mother bear takes a dip in the water to cool off in the warm summer sun but refuses to leave her three youngsters behind – so they climb aboard her back. (Photo by Jon Langeland/Solent News & Photo Agency)

An athlete pulls a 15-tonne truck during a Truck-Pull event marking the upcoming Independence Day in the Belarus capital Minsk, on July 3, 2014. The former Soviet nation celebrates its Independence Day on July 3 in memory of the end of Belarus occupation by Nazi Germany troops during the Red Army main summer offensive in 1944. (Photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP Photo)

Travel photographer Amos Chapple recently crossed into Turkmenistan on a three-day transit visa and was able to photograph many of the sights and monuments in Ashgabat, the capital and largest city. Turkmenistan is a single-party country, a former Soviet state, run by a president at the center of a cult of personality.

Photo: A young couple leave the Alem Entertainment Center in Ashgabat. The current president has a history of breaking obscure records. In 2012 the wheel atop this complex was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest enclosed Ferris wheel. The structure was built at a cost of $90m. (Photo by Amos Chapple via The Atlantic)

A boy jumps from a swing during sunset in Valras-Plage, southern France December 29, 2014. (Photo by Yves Herman/Reuters)

In this Wednesday, March 18, 2015 photo, limestone quarry workers walk through a cloud of dust spewed into the air by rotor blades of the stone-cutting machinery in the desert of Minya, southern Egypt. Around 45,000 people, including children, work in an estimated 1,500 quarries, digging out stones that later will be used in construction or powdered to be used by pharmaceutical and ceramic companies. (Photo by Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP Photo)