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)

Tourists sit around a bonfire on the Makgadikgadi salt pan in Botswana. (Photo by Yang Mengxi/Xinhua News Agency/Barcroft Media)

Paul Dixon is an engineer by day and an astrophotographer by night. He shot this broken boat on Dungeness beach, Kent in the last decade of August 2024, 17 times, stacking the images upon each other before combining them with a similar composite of the Milky Way. (Photo by Paul Dixon/Media Drum Images)

Actor Jackie Chan poses with student performers after participating in a leg of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Torch Relay at the Badaling Great Wall on February 3, 2022 outside Beijing, China. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

An incredible clear-air lightning display from storms to the east of Noonamah, just outside Darwin on April 6, 2015. (Photo by Jacci Ingham/The Guardian)

Plumes of smoke rise from the snow covered volcano Villarrica, in Pucon, Chile on December 7, 2023. (Photo by Cristobal Saavedra Escobar/Reuters)

The Mount Bromo volcano erupts in the Bryce Canyon, Utah. (Photo by Reynold Dewantara/2016 National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year Contest)

The galactic core of the Milky Way glows brightly in the clear night sky above St Catherine?s Chapel at Abbotsbury in Dorset, UK on August 2, 2024. (Photo by Graham Hunt/Alamy Live News)