A Sorb egg painter decorates an Easter egg while using bent spoons full of melted wax as coloring at the annual Easter egg market on March 16, 2013 in Schleife, Germany. Easter is a particularly important time of year for Sorbs, a Slavic minority in eastern Germany, and the period includes the tradition of painting Easter eggs that include visual elements intended to ward off evil. Many Sorbs still speak Sorbian, a language closely related to Polish and Czech. (Photo by Adam Berry)

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn's north pole. In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane's eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon. Photo: The spinning vortex of Saturn's north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. (Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

“The scientists behind NASA's $2.5 billion Curiosity rover mission on Mars on Tuesday explained the nature of a tiny, gleaming "flower" embedded in Red Planet rock, and revealed where they'll be using the SUV-sized robot's drill for the first time”. – Alan Boyle via NBCNews.com

Photo: Scientists say that a “Martian flower”, seen here in an image from the Curiosity rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager, is a 2-millimeter-wide grain or pebble that's embedded in the surrounding rock. Another, darker-colored mineral grain can be seen above and to the left. (Photo by NASA)

Most people know Nikon as a purveyor of pro and consumer-grade digital cameras. But the company's expertise with optics bleeds over into related markets – it's one of the science community's major suppliers of microscopes. And each year the company asks the community to send it some of their favorite images of tiny objects. A panel of scientists and journalists have chosen the best of this past year's submissions, which Nikon has placed on its Small World site.

Photo: Honorable Mention. “Snow crystal, illuminated with colored lights (5x)”. (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Department of Physics, Pasadena, California, USA)

These incredible pictures look like a bird's-eye view of a faraway alien planet – but they're actually hot springs. The amazing snaps are up-close shots of Iceland's hot springs, and the point-blank pictures produce a breathtaking array of colors and effects. Here: The amazing snaps are up-close shots of Icelandic hot springs. (Photo by Johann Vilhjalmsson/Caters News)

An Iranian man sells colorful ropes at the Tehrans old Bazaar, the place where the main economy trades take place, in Tehran, Iran, 25 January 2016. Reports state that Iranian officials expected the Iranian economy to grow on an average of eight percent over the coming five years following the lifting of sanctions against Iran. (Photo by Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA)

People sit next to an art installation during the “Plastic Dinoland” exhibition by Japanese artist Hiroshi Fuji, in Hanoi, Vietnam, 17 March 2025. The exhibition, which features colorful installations of dinosaurs made from discarded toys, runs from 15 March to 01 June 2025 at The Japan Foundation in Hanoi. (Photo by Luong Thai Linh/EPA/EFE)

A police officer sprinkles colored powder onto a police dog at Nepal's Central Police Dog Training School during a dog worship day as part of the Diwali festival, also known as Tihar Festival, in Kathmandu, Nepal, 10 November 2015. The Tihar festival is the second major festival for Nepalese Hindus and this year is held from 10 November 2015. (Photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA)