A French Air Force Mirage 2000 fighter jet takes off during the close air support (CAS) exercise Serpentex 2016 hosted by France in the Mediterranean island of Corsica, at Solenzara air base, March 17, 2016. Serpentex is an annual exercise that involves joint terminal attack controllers (JTACs) from 12 countries from March 7 to March 25, 2016. (Photo by Charles Platiau/Reuters)

Lightning illuminates a thundercloud as a storm front hits the North Sea region near Westerhever, northern Germany, on August 11, 2014. (Photo by Daniel Reinhardt/AFP Photo/DPA)

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 man pulls a cart with collapsed cardboard boxes past boutiques in the Sinchon district in Seoul, May 5, 2015. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

A participant tries to stay warm during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan,New York, U.S., November 22, 2018. (Photo by Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

A woman walks protecting herself from rain after Hurricane Matthew in Les Anglais, Haiti, October 13, 2016. (Photo by Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters)

The Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) is seen in the sky in Ivalo of Lapland, Finland on September 27, 2019. (Photo by Alexander Kuznetsov/Reuters)

Iraqi children play with a ball on a street blocked with burning tyres, amid a general strike in the southern city of Basra, on November 25, 2019. The demonstrations rocking the capital and Shiite-majority south since October 1 are the biggest grassroots movement the country has seen in decades. Sparked by outrage over rampant government corruption, poor services and lack of jobs, they have since gone straight to the source: calling out the ruling system as inherently flawed and in need of a total overhaul. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)