Mount Nyiragongo is an active stratovolcano On the Virunga Mountains associated with the Albertine Rift. It is located inside Virunga National Park, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, about 20 km (12 mi) north of the town of Goma and Lake Kivu and just west of the border with Rwanda. The main crater is about two km wide and usually contains a lava lake.

Merit Prize Winner: “A Well Earned Rest in the Sahara”. This photo of Moussa Macher, our Tuareg guide, was taken at the summit of Tin-Merzouga, the largest dune (or erg) in the Tadrat region of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria. Moussa rested while waiting for us to finish our 45-minute struggle to the top. It only took ten minutes of rolling, running, and jumping to get back down. The Tadrat is part of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park World Heritage area, famous for its red sand and engravings and rock paintings of cattle, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos that lived there when the climate was milder. Photo location: Summit of Tin-Merzouga, Tadrat, Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, Algeria. (Photo and caption by Evan Cole/National Geographic Photo Contest)

Members of the Krewe of Joan of Arc parade as Twelfth Night kicks off Carnival season, in New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 6, 2025. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

A visitor feeds a food pellet to a giraffe in the Giraffe Centre in Nairobi, Kenya January 15, 2017. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

A young woman wearing no trousers hits the ski slopes at a ski resort in Xuzhou, in east China's Jiangsu province on January 13, 2015 in a promotional effort to equal “No Pants Subway Ride”, which was marked on January 11 this year. The promotional “No Pants Subway Ride” stunt on January 11 was held as commuters in some 60 cities around the world braved public transportation in their undies, which has gone global since its first staging by US group Improv Everywhere in New York in 2002. (Photo by AFP Photo)

Children try to walk through a flooded street at Kampung Melayu residential area in Jakarta, December 23, 2014. Torrential rains that have continued in Indonesia in recent days have widened the number of flooded areas that include Jakarta and Bandung, a local newspaper said on Tuesday. (Photo by Reuters/Beawiharta)

British comedian Elf Lyons performing her solo show, Talk Dirty, at Monkey Barrel Comedy club at Edinburgh festival in capital of Scotland on August 5, 2021. The Edinburgh international festival announced much-reduced programme this year. (Photo by Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian)

A sеx worker protests at Rua Guaicurus, the main bohemian area of Belo Horizonte, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil on April 5, 2021, asking to be considered a priority group to receive the vaccine agaisnt COVID-19. (Photo by Douglas Magno/AFP Photo)