PH Sport's driver Sebastian Loeb races against an airplane during a performance act at the Peru Dakar Rally in Lima, Peru on January 5, 2019. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)

A Wallcreeper (aka Tichodroma muraria) flies to a flower on January 28, 2024 in Leshan, Sichuan Province of China. (Photo by Zhou Zhiyong/VCG via Getty Images)

Breath of an Arctic fox by Marco Gaiotti, Italy. Marco was watching this little Arctic fox as it incessantly called another nearby. Gradually he noticed the fox’s wet breath was quickly freezing in the air after each call. It was late winter in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, and the air was -35C (-31F). Photographing Arctic foxes is often frustrating, as they are normally running around fast in search of food, but this one was very relaxed and let Marco get close enough to focus on it, with the light glowing perfectly in the background. (Photo by Marco Gaiotti/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2021)

“Yucca is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the agave family, Agavaceae. Its 40-50 species are notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitish flowers. They are native to the hot and dry (arid) parts of North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Early reports of the species were confused with the cassava (Manihot esculenta). Consequently, Linnaeus mistakenly derived the generic name from the Carib word for the latter, yuca. It is also colloquially known in the midwest United States as “Ghosts in the graveyard”, as it is commonly found growing in rural graveyards and when in bloom the flowers appear as an apparition floating.” – Wikipedia

Photo: A yucca standing among flowers bursts forth a very large stalk of flowers as a heavy wildflower bloom on June 21, 2005 in the Angeles National Forest northwest of La Canada, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

“A dazzling exhibition featuring jewelry made with the world’s largest diamond will be part of the celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. The jewelry was made with a 3,106-carat diamond discovered in 1905 at the Cullinan Diamond Mine near Pretoria, the capital of South Africa. The diamond was so large that miners initially thought it was a worthless crystal and almost threw it away”... – Vidya Kauri via News.nationalpost.com

Photo: Caroline de Guitaut, Curator of Royal Collections, holds the Cullinan III and IV Broach and the Cullinan VII Delhi Durbar Necklace and Cullinan Pendant at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace on May 15, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid)

The Haʻikū Stairs, also known as the Stairway to Heaven or Haʻikū Ladder, is a steep hiking trail on the island of Oʻahu. The trail began as a wooden ladder spiked to the cliff on the south side of the Haʻikū Valley. It was installed in 1942 to enable antenna cables to be strung from one side of the cliffs above Haʻikū Valley to the other. A building to provide a continuous communication link between Wahiawā and Haʻikū Valley Naval Radio Station was constructed at the peak of Puʻukeahiakahoe, elevation about 2,800 feet (850 m). The antennae transmitted very low frequency radio signals from a 200,000-watt Alexanderson alternator in the center of Haʻikū valley. The signals could reach US Navy submarines as far away as Tokyo Bay while the submarines were submerged.

A clown plays the violin during the XXI Convention of Clowns, at the Jimenez Rueda Theatre, in Mexico City, Mexico, October 19, 2016. In the wake of the creepy clown sightings in several states of North and South Americas and Europe that caused widespread panic, professional clowns from across Latin America came together at an annual convention in Mexico to give a serious message: “We are clowns, not killers!”. Around 200 clowns took part in the 21st International Clown Convention, dressed in bright coloured clothes and makeup, and chanted the word as they clicked group pictures to counter the “creepy clown” craze. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)

These images have been created using a colour scanning electron microscope (SEM) by the award-winning Eye of Science, comprised of snapper Oliver Meckes and biologist Nicole Ottawa. For a decade the pair, based in Reutlingen in the south of Germany, worked with an old SEM they saved from the scrapheap, but for the last five years they have used a £250,000 FEI Quanta Series Field Emission SEM. Oliver said: “Flowers are beautiful in 'normal' view, but when you look closer, some parts get very bizarre and unexpected structures appear – flowers within flowers, worlds within worlds”. Photo: The floret of a Chamomile flower up close and personal. (Photo by Oliver Meckes/Barcroft Media)