Opossums on their mothers back at a game reserve in Central Minnesota, USA, on September 2, 2013. (Photo by Caters News Agency)

A new monorail service in Houston, Texas, ready for its inaugural service. (Photo by Evans/Three Lions/Getty Images). Circa 1950

Pausing for a selfie as plum blossoms burst into bloom in Dujiangyan City, in southwest China’s Sichuan province on February 20, 2024. (Photo by Splash News and Pictures)

Commuters make their way across a street during rainfall in New Delhi on June 27, 2024. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

Mount Kilimanjaro looms behind an elephant at Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya, 2024. (Photo byYaron Schmid/YS Wildlife Photography/Solent News)

Swimmer silhouetted in a waterslide in the coastal suburb of Glenelg, Adelaide, Australia on January 21, 2025. (Photo by Amer Ghazzal/Alamy Live News)

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)