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)

Brush your teeth and get cleaned up for the week ahead! These animals answered the call of good dental hygiene. Here: Hamster holds toothbrush. (Photo by Neo Vision/Getty Images/Amana Images RM)

A flash of lightning lights up a raincloud hovering over a township in Dharmsala, India, Sunday, April 19, 2020. (Photo by Ashwini Bhatia/AP Photo)

In this photo taken on Thursday, March 7, 2019, the sun rises over the star on the spire on top of a Stalin-era skyscraper, now the Radisson Royal Hotel on the banks of the Moskva River in Moscow, Russia. (Photo by Dmitry Serebryakov/AP Photo)

The tusk of a woolly mammoth that lived some 18,000 years ago, from which researchers sequenced the extinct mammal's entire genome, is seen in northeastern Siberia in this photo from 2015. (Photo by Love Dalen/Handout via Reuters)

An Olive Ridley sea turtle hatchling releases into the sea at Lhoknga beach, Indonesia's Aceh province on January 16, 2024. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP Photo)

“In the ongoing epics of the Pakistani Starfleet in their ever lasting quest to embrace and protect the freedoms of all humanity and life elsewhere in the cosmos we explore the future of Pakistan as a leader in advanced technology, diverse culture, exploration, helping to preserve peace & help those in need from the less than benign that reside in the darkest reaches of the cosmos to those who share & cherish kinship with all of humanity from the brightest reaches of the cosmos”. – Kenny Hassan Irwin

Mingora Hovoped Takes No Ordinary Rider. (Photo by Kenny Hassan Irwin)

For her series “Dolce Vita in Hell”, Swiss photojournalist Stéphanie Buret headed to Eritrea and found a country struggling to haul itself out of oppression – but with its art deco buildings still looking stunning. (Photo by Stéphanie Buret/The Guardian)