The Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft carrying the crew formed of Kathleen Rubins of NASA, Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos blasts off to the International Space Station (ISS) from the launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on October 14, 2020. (Photo by Russian space agency Roscosmos/Handout via Reuters)

Check out this tornado spotted in Broward County, Florida on October 9, 2024, as Hurricane Milton closes in on the sunshine state. Florida Dept of Transport posted these striking images showing the menacing weather system forming some 252 miles away from Tampa, where the hurricane is expected to hit overnight. (Photo by FloridaDOT/The Mega Agency)

A Nihang or Sikh warrior performs “Gatka”, an ancient form of Sikh martial arts, during a religious procession on the eve of the birth anniversary of the ninth Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur outside the Golden Temple in Amritsar on April 17, 2025. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP Photo)

Layers of breathtaking colour streak the rolling hills of this vast desert, making the landscape appear as though it has been tie-dyed. The natural phenomenon, nicknamed the “Painted Desert”, was formed when the area was once a river floodplain. Each colour corresponds to a different underground geological feature – rocks which have seemingly dyed the layers of earth above. Formed from volcanic activity, the hills at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in East Central Oregon, USA, are almost bursting with colour. Pictured: The colourful hills at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in East Central Oregon, USA. (Photo by Mark Brodkin/Solent News/SIPA Press)

Korean artist Seung Mo Park continues to amaze with his astonishingly crafted figurative sculptures made with tightly wrapped layers of aluminum wire based on fiberglass forms. The works shown here are part of the Brooklyn-based artist’s Human series where he recreates the delicate wrinkles and folds of clothing as well as the sinuous musculature of the human body in metallic layers remeniscent of tree rings. He’s also sculpted bicycles, musical insturments and other forms as part of his Object series.

HRP-4C, a five-foot humanoid robot developed at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, sings and dances with performers at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo on October 17, 2010. The robot runs entertainment software called Choreonoid, a name formed from the words “choreograph” and “humanoid”. (Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP)

California-based glass artist Loren Stump specializes in a form of glasswork called murrine, where rods of glass are melted together and then sliced to reveal elaborate patterns and forms. While the murrina process appeared in the Mideast some 4,000 years ago, Stump has perfected his own technique over the past 35 years to the point where he can now layer entire portraits and paintings in glass before slicing them to see the final results. His most complex piece to date is a detailed interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks, which involved hundreds of glass components that were melted into a final piece.

Arachnids category 3rd place: dancing spider by Raed Ammari. Male jumping spiders (in this case a Phidippus insignarius) perform a courtship dance in which they almost form a heart shape with their legs. This one was shot in Colorado. (Photo by Raed Ammari/Luminar Bug Photographer of the Year 2020)