A Geminid meteor streaks diagonally across the sky against a field of star trails behind one of the peaks of the Seven Sisters rock formation in this long exposure early December 14, 2007 in the Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. The meteor display, known as the Geminid meteor shower because it appears to radiate from near the star Castor in the constellation Gemini, is thought to be the result of debris cast off from an asteroid-like object called 3200 Phaethon. The shower is visible every December. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

A tourist watches as the moon passing in front of the sun as it approaches a full solar eclipse in the northern Australian city of Cairns November 14, 2012. (Photo by Tim Wimborne/Reuters)

A view of northern lights over the skies of Sodankyla, Lapland, Finland, on October 7, 2024. (Photo by Alexander Kuznetsov/All About Lapland/Handout via Reuters)

In this March 20, 2016 photo, Maj. Mohammed Hussein, an officer with Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces, shows a photo of a slain Islamic State group militant still wearing in a suicide vest, taken during fighting that freed the city of Ramadi from IS control earlier this year. As they fled, the militants destroyed some buildings and booby-trapped others with explosives, leaving behind an empty prize for government forces retaking the city. (Photo by Maya Alleruzzo/AP Photo)

Typhoon Bopha moves toward the Philippines, observed from the ISS, on December 2, 2012. (Photo by AP Photo/NASA via The Atlantic)

New York City policemen tangled with demonstrators at a subway station on the opening day of the New York World's Fair, April 22, 1964. Youths attempted to stall the train, which was headed from the city to the fairgrounds, as a form of protest on behalf of civil rights for blacks. (Photo by Charles Gorry/AP Photo)

Aerial view of the “Viracocha III”, a boat made only from the totora reed, as it is being prepared to cross the Pacific from Chile to Australia on an expected six-month journey, La Paz, Bolivia, October 19, 2016. An expedition in a boat made only of reeds crafted by indigenous Bolivians is getting ready to cross the Pacific from South America to Australia, in a fresh attempt to prove that ancient mariners were capable of making the journey. (Photo by David Mercado/Reuters)

First place, The Beauty of Plants. “There are many stages of lotus growth on display at the Aquatic Gardens, but to come across twotwisted dancing stems of nelumbo nucifera was unexpected and quite magical”. (Photo by Kathleen Furey/The Guardian)