A serviceman of the 148th Separate Artillery Zhytomyr Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine sits near shells as he and a soldier await command to fire a M777 Howitzer towards Russian troops at a position in a front line, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on February 8, 2025. (Photo by Anatolii Stepanov/Reuters)

Some of the best entries so far in the 2016 Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. There are two weeks left to enter, and the winners will be announced in September. Here: Aurora over Laksvatn Fjord, Laksvatn, Norway. The aurora borealis dances in the skies over the town of Laksvatn, with the Milky Way to the left. The image is a single shot with no compositing, only post-processing to bring out the aurora, and some colour corrections. The photographer Matt Walford said: “I love the way the northern lights look like they are just wistfully dancing over the fjord, framed by the mountains on either side”. (Photo by Matt Walford/National Maritime Museum)

Chris Staring photographs a mysterious train graveyard in the heart of southern Bolivia, where the skeletons of British steam locomotives and rail cars rust away on the edge of the world’s largest salt flats. More than 100 rail cars and locomotives can be found in different states of decay in the train graveyard. (Photo by Chris Staring/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Kira Walkenhorst of Germany (L) signals as Doaa Elghobashy of Egypt (R) watches during the women's Beach Volleyball preliminary pool D game between Ludwig/Walkenhors of Germany and Elghobashy/Nada of Egypt the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Beach Volleyball Arena on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 07 August 2016. (Photo by Antonio Lacerda/ANSA)

Stones collected and categorised by shape (fish) are seen at the home workshop of Luigi Lineri in Zevio, near Verona, Italy, June 10, 2016. Luigi Lineri's home workshop is covered in stones – tens of thousands of them. They resemble animal heads, human faces and other forms, and the artist and poet believes may have been shaped by prehistoric humans. (Photo by Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters)

These frozen caves seem almost otherworldly as they daylight illuminates them. Matej Kriz’s shots reveal the beauty of the brilliant caves, but he’s also very aware of how deadly they can be. The photographer captured the amazing shots in the Vatnajokull National Park on the Breidamerkurjokull glacier tongue. Here: The ice caves, taken in the Vatnajokull National Park in Iceland, on November 11, 2017. (Photo by Matej Kriz/Caters News Agency)

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) rangers load a tranquilized elephant onto a truck during a translocation exercise to Ithumba Camp in Tsavo East National Park, in Solio Ranch in Nyeri County, Kenya, February 21, 2018. Wildlife officials in Kenya kicked off a relocation operation for 30 elephants, fitting monitoring collars on the tranquilized animals before using cranes to swing them, inverted with bound feet and scything tusks, onto flatbed trucks. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)

A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket, with a payload of 60 satellites for SpaceX's Starlink broadband network, lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 during a time exposure at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday, May 23, 2019. (Photo by Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP Photo)