A coil-shaped Helix Nebula showing a fine web of filamentary “bicycle-spoke” features embedded in the colorful red and blue ring of gas. At 650 light-years away, the Helix is one of the nearest planetary nebulae to Earth. A planetary nebula is the glowing gas around a dying, Sun-like star. (Photo by Reuters/NASA)

A shooting star (L, top) is seen on the night sky during the perseid meteor shower in Jankowo, near Poznan, 11 August 2016. The first half of August is traditionally the best time to look out for meteors called “shooting stars”, or perseids which are the leftover dust particles of a comet tail associated with comet Swift-Tuttle. (Photo by Lukasz Ogrodowczyk/EPA)

Aurorae category runner-up: Lone Tree under a Scandinavian Aurora by Tom Archer (UK). The photographer decided to explore the area around the hotel on a very crisp -35C evening in Finnish Lapland. When he found this tree, he decided to wait for the misty conditions to change and could not believe his luck when the sky cleared and the aurora came out in the perfect spot. Archer spent about an hour photographing it before his camera started to lock up because of the harsh conditions, but by then he was happy to call it a night. (Photo by Tom Archer/2020 Astronomy Photographer of the Year)

“The aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar that combines rodent-like teeth and a special thin middle finger to fill the same ecological niche as a woodpecker. It is the world's largest nocturnal primate, and is characterized by its unusual method of finding food; it taps on trees to find grubs, then gnaws holes in the wood and inserts its narrow middle finger to pull the grubs out. The only other animal species known to find food in this way is the striped possum. From an ecological point of view the aye-aye fills the niche of a woodpecker as it is capable of penetrating wood to extract the invertebrates within”. – Wikipedia

Photo: In this handout image from Bristol Zoo is seen the first captive bred aye-aye in the UK named “Kintana” (meaning star in Malagasy) April 15, 2005 at Bristol Zoo Gardens, England. The zoo announced today only the second baby aye-aye to be hand-reared in the world (the first was in Jersey Zoo) and has now made his first public appearance since his birth on 11 February 2005. (Photo by Rob Cousins/Bristol Zoo via Getty Images)

These snaps were captured by a pro phone camera photographer. You can see the intricate detail in each shot, from the shining eyes of the insects to the tiny water droplets that splash down on them. Here: Komangs macro photography of insects using his Samsung Galaxy J7 and homemade camera lens in Bali, Indonesia. (Photo by Komang Wirnata/Caters News Agency)

The Royal Observatory just announced its Astronomy Photographer Of The Year 2013 winners. Australian photographer Mark Gee was chosen among a thousand amateur and professional photographers around the globe to win the top title. His work is part of an exhibition of the winning photographers, which opened on Sept. 19 at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. The Royal Observatory shared with us the winners and notable mentions of the competition. Their descriptions of the prizewinners can be found below the images.

A man wearing a costume of the StarWars protagonist Din Djarin poses in front of a giant replica of the Razor Crest, a gunship from the StarWars spinoff series “The Mandalorian” used by the hit TV show's mysterious bounty hunter to roam the galaxy's outer reaches, in a park of the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk on March 14, 2021. (Photo by Evgeniy Sofroneyev/AFP Photo)

Amateur astronomer Bill Snyder has been involved with astrophotography since 2007. Photo: The Cygnus Wall is in the southern area of NGC7000 also known as the North America Nebula. It is approximately 1800 light years from Earth, and is in the constellation Cygnus. The Wall is an energized shock front and contains the most concentrated star formations in the nebula. The size of the North America Nebula is about 4 full moons. (Photo and caption by Bill Snyder)