The Angel of The North at Gateshead in Tyne and Wear, UK with a halo drawn in sky using a light on a drone, captured during a 25-second exposure on January 20, 2025. (Photo by Ian Sproat/Picture Exclusive)

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)

The Doppler on Wheels (DOW) vehicle scans a supercell thunderstorm during a tornado research mission, May 8, 2017 in Elbert County near Agate, Colorado. Doppler on Wheels (DOW) is a mobile doppler radar mounted on a truck that brings instruments directly into storms, allowing scientists to scan storms and tornadoes and make 3-D maps of wind and debris. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The 30th anniversary of the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant that caused large amounts of radioactive particles to be released into the air will be commemorated on April 26, 2016. Photojournalist Sean Gallup returned to the area to document the lasting effects of the world's worst nuclear power plant accident. Pictured, children's beds are seen in an abandoned kindergarten in Kopachi village located inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone, September 29, 2015, near Chernobyl, Ukraine. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

A worker carries a carp freshwater fish at a breeding site in Iraq's central city of Najaf, on June 13, 2021. (Photo by Ali Najafi/AFP Photo)

A dead fish lies on the bank of Oder River on the German-Polish border, in Brieskow-Finkenheerd, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, August 11, 2022. Authorities are looking into the cause of the mysterious fish deaths. (Photo by Annegret Hilse/Reuters)

Members of the Beltane Fire Society take part in Samhuinn Fire Festival on October 31, 2023 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Once celebrated from October 31 to November 1 by ancient Celts, Samhain, pronounced “SOW-in” or “SAH-win”, marked the shift from the brighter to the darker half of the year and was seen as a time when the boundary between the physical and spirit worlds was thought to weaken, influencing the development of contemporary Halloween customs. (Photo by Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian)