The northern lights, or aurora borealis, appear in the sky over the Bamburgh lighthouse at Stag Rock in Northumberland, England on September 28, 2016. (Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Wire via ZUMA Press)
New Zealand Defence Force personal perform a haka during Te Rau Aroha, an evening to commemorate Maori service in the New Zealand Armed Forces on February 05, 2020 in Waitangi, New Zealand. The Waitangi Day national holiday celebrates the signing of the treaty of Waitangi on February 6, 1840 by Maori chiefs and the British Crown, that granted the Maori people the rights of British Citizens and ownership of their lands and other properties. (Photo by Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)
Steam emerges from a cooling tower of the nuclear power plant Leibstadt near Leibstadt, Switzerland, November 18, 2014. (Photo by Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters)
Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)
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)
Actresses perform during the Olympic flame lighting ceremony for the Paris 2024 Olympics Games at the Ancient Olympia archeological site, birthplace of the ancient Olympics in southern Greece, on April 16, 2024. (Photo by Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP Photo)
Kazakh law enforcement officers detain a woman during a protest rally by opposition supporters in Nur-Sultan on September 21, 2019. (Photo by Orken Zhoyamergen/Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)