Underwater photographer of the year – winner. Dancing Octopus by Gabriel Barathieu (France). Location: Island of Mayotte, off the coast of south-east Africa. “Balletic and malevolent”, one judge said of this octopus, hunting in a lagoon. Barathieu waited until spring tides when there was just 30cm of water on the flats and plenty of light in the shallows. (Photo by Gabriel Barathieu/UPY2017)

Arachnids category 3rd place: dancing spider by Raed Ammari. Male jumping spiders (in this case a Phidippus insignarius) perform a courtship dance in which they almost form a heart shape with their legs. This one was shot in Colorado. (Photo by Raed Ammari/Luminar Bug Photographer of the Year 2020)

A golden huddle by Minqiang Lu, China. Two females and a male golden snub-nosed monkey huddle together to keep warm in the extreme cold. Threatened by forest loss and fragmentation, this endangered species is confined to central China. Restricted to living high up in the temperate forests, these monkeys – here in the Qinling mountains in Shaanxi province – feed mostly in the trees, on leaves, bark, buds and lichen. In heavy wind and snow, Minqiang walked up the mountain carrying his equipment. He stayed for half an hour in temperatures of –10C opposite the tree where the group was huddled before achieving this eye-level composition. (Photo by Minqiang Lu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

From Tibetan monks playing basket ball with ice thawing high up in the Himalayas, to the pollution that hides behind the Taj Mahal, here’s pick from 60 exceptional environmental photographs, by photographers and filmmakers from 70 countries, that will go on show at the Royal Geographical Society in London from 29 June to 21 August. The winners will be announced on 28 June. Here: Gravel Workmen of Chittagong, Bangladesh, by Faisal Azim. Gravel workmen look through a glass window at a gravel-crushing yard in Chittagong. Full of dust and sand, it is an extremely unhealthy environment for working, but still hundreds of people work here for their livelihoods. (Photo by Faisal Azim/2016 Atkins CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year)

Gorgeous galaxies and stunning stars make up this selection of pictures from the shortlisted entries for this year’s Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year award. The winners will be announced on 15 September, and an exhibition of the winning images will be will be displayed in a free exhibition at the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Centre from 17 September. Here: “Seven Magic Points”. The rusty red swirls of the circular, iron sculpture Seven Magic Points in Brattebergan, Norway mirror the rippling aurora above. (Photo by Rune Engebø/Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2016/National Maritime Museum)

Scared of Heights. “Taken from the highest residential building in Asia: the Zenith in Busan. This was taken with official permission (which took me months to get) and safety measures were taken. I had to hang myself over the edge to get this shot. Not for the faint of heart! But when you’re at a height like this, the world below you just seems different. It takes away the fear one would normally have, and gives a sense of peace instead”. (Photo by Albert Dros/NatGeo Cities Travel Photographer of the Year 2017)

“Mr Big Dipper”, Nicholas Roemmelt (Denmark). A stargazer observes the constellation of the Big Dipper perfectly aligned with the window of the entrance to a large glacier cave in Engadin, Switzerland. This is a panorama of two pictures, and each is a stack of another two pictures: one for the stars and another one for the foreground, but with no composing or time blending. (Photo by Nicholas Roemmelt/National Maritime Museum/The Guardian)

Commended. In late May, about a quarter of a million snow geese arrive from North America to nest on Wrangel Island, in northeastern Russia. They form the world's largest breeding colony of snow geese. Photographer Sergey Gorshkov spent two months on the remote island photographing the unfolding dramas. Arctic foxes take advantage of the abundance of eggs, caching surplus eggs for leaner times. But a goose (here the gander) is easily a match for a fox, which must rely on speed and guile to steal eggs. “The battles were fairly equal”, notes Sergey, “and I only saw a fox succeed in grabbing an egg on a couple of occasions, despite many attempts”. Surprisingly, “the geese lacked any sense of community spirit”, he adds, “and never reacted when a fox harassed a neighboring pair nesting close by”. (Photo by Sergey Gorshkov/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer)