The competition, which is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine, is now in its sixth year and has received over 2,500 entries. Photo: Centre of the Heart Nebula by Ivan Eder (Hungary). Situated 7500 light years away in the “W”-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia, the Heart Nebula is a vast region of glowing gas, energized by a cluster of young stars at its centre. The image depicts the central region, where dust clouds are being eroded and moulded into rugged shapes by the searing cosmic radiation. (Photo by Ivan Eder)

Kevin Fast, 51, holds several Guinness World Records including the heaviest plane pulled by a man and has lifted 22 women with his back. The Reverend Dr Kevin Fast is officially God's gift to powerlifting after being named as the world's strongest priest. The Canadian pastor, 51, has been performing incredible stunts of heavy lifting for years after being inspired by 19th Century strongman Louis Cyr. He holds several Guinness World Records including the heaviest aircraft pulled by a man, which weighed in at a whopping 189 tonnes, heaviest truck pulled by an arm wrestling move, heaviest vehicle pulled over 100ft and the longest duration holding 500kg with the shoulders.

Weighing in at just under 6 pounds and at 22.6 inches long, the female pup arrived at Shedd in late October from Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, where she spent the first four weeks of her life being stabilized. The pup has been doing well since her arrival, receiving continual care behind the scenes of Shedd’s Abbott Oceanarium. Currently referred to as “Pup 681”, Shedd’s animal care and veterinarian teams are providing the continual, round-the-clock care she needs to thrive. Photos used with permisson from Shedd Aquarium. (Photo by Brenna Hernandez/AP Photo)

You might feel as if you are being watched when you look at these incredible pictures – revealing the close-up world of a spider's eyes. The intimidating creatures, which look like they should live in a horror film, star menacingly at the camera as every fleck of colour and hair are revealed. But despite their appearance the arachnids are actually jumping spiders, which measure a tiny six millimetres in length. The harmless arachnids, which are capable of jumping up to six times their own height, can be found in grassy meadows and on the walls of houses on sunny days. (Photo by SWNS/ABACA Press)

Two Hindu holy men of the Juna Akhara sect are being take on a motorcycle by their teacher as they got delayed for a rituals that are believed to rid them of all ties in this life and dedicate themselves to serving God as a “Naga” or naked holy men, at Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna River during the Maha Kumbh festival in Allahabad, India, Wednesday, February 6, 2013. The significance of nakedness is that they will not have any worldly ties to material belongings, even something as simple as clothes. This ritual that transforms selected holy men to Naga can only be done at the Kumbh festival. (Photo by Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP Photo)

An orphaned giraffe nuzzling a wildlife keeper at Sarara camp in Kenya, one of 70 pictures being sold by Prints for Nature (printsfornature.com) to raise money for work by the Conservation International charity. This giraffe was rehabilitated and returned to the wild, as a number of others have done before him. Right now, giraffe are undergoing what has been referred to as a silent extinction. Current estimates are that giraffe populations across Africa have dropped 40 percent in three decades, plummeting from approximately 155,000 in the late 1980s to under 100,000 today. (Photo by Ami Vitale/National Geographic)

A grey-bellied Night Monkey (Aotus Lemurinus) plays with a teddy bear at the veterinary clinic of the Cali Zoo in Cali, Colombia on January 27, 2020. They monkey is being raised by personnel of the Cali Zoo after a worker found it near the complex. Apparently it fall from a tree with his father who had health problems. (Photo by Luis Robayo/AFP Photo)

In this photo taken Wednesday, March 8, 2017, a woman herder sits with her goats in a remote desert area near Bandar Beyla in Somalia's semiautonomous northeastern state of Puntland. Somalia has declared the drought a national disaster, part of what the United Nations calls the largest humanitarian crisis since the world body was founded in 1945, and with animals being central to many the drought threatens their main sources of nutrition and survival. (Photo by Ben Curtis/AP Photo)