Eighty one-year-old Sakon Haba (L) wearing loin cloth walks past a police station after he bathed in ice-cold water at the Teppozu Inari shrine in Tokyo January 11, 2015. According to organizers, about 100 participants took part in the Shinto ceremony to purify their souls and wish for good health in the new year. (Photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters)

A brave photographer managed to get within metres of an active volcano despite it spewing out lava waves over 140 metres high. Silhouetted against a fiery fountain of red, Icelandic photographer, Tómas Freyr Kristjánsson, 37, braved blistering temperatures to get as close the volcano as possible. Although very few were brave enough to get so close, Tómas managed to photograph nearby tourists to give some scale to the spraying molten rock, including that of a nearby motorcyclist. (Photo by Tómas Freyr Kristjánsson/Caters News)

Al-Shamiyah Front fighters inspect a new locally-made cannon named “Borkan” (Volcano) as it was being launched towards forces loyal to Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad located in Aleppo artillery school, March 7, 2015. The “Borkan” is made out of four tubes attached to a loader, which can fire four shells at a time, and have a range of three kilometers (1.86 miles). (Photo by Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters)

This breathtaking view from the world's tallest building shows a thick blanket of smoggy fog smother Dubai. The mist almost completely covers the huge sculptures which dominate the skyline. And the spectacular view from the Burj Khalifa – standing at a staggering 828 metres tall – shows the city engulfed by the thick fog. And the smoggy fog reaches heights of up to 400 metres as it rises above the impressive skyscrapers in Dubai. (Photo by Bjoern Lauen/Solent News/SIPA Press)

The claws are out for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and Russia's Vladimir Putin – as cats now able to use a model of him as a scratching post. And moggies can also maul at Russian president Vladimir Putin, whose face also features on the new cat toys which are 1.5ft tall and cost £4,500. They are made from hessian rope, and 3D-printed faces are then attached to the posts, before they are handpainted. The toys took a team of artists 200 hours to finish. (Photo by The Pussycat Riot)

Lagoon Master. These amazing pictures of nebula thousands of light years from Earth have been captured by an amateur astronomer Dr. Dennis Roscoe snapped the beautiful celestial formations from his own personal observatory. His telescope looks into deep space at the nebula, which show both the birth and death of stars, like our very own Sun. (Photo by Dennis Roscoe/Caters News)

These spectacular pictures show the incredible moment a rare natural phenomenon happens in the night sky. Red sprite lightning lasts only a millisecond and takes place high above a tunderstorm cloud.The breathtaking flashes of light are caused by huge electrical discharges of lightning in the sky. Marko Korosec, 32, was lucky enough to catch these sprites on camera after months of trying. Mr Korosec, from Sezana in Slovenia, took the shots whilst he was following storms in Vivaro, Italy. (Photo by Marko Korosec/Solent News/SIPA Press)

Ever wondered what life is like in miniature? An Italian photographer has perfected his own brand of macro photography with stunning pictures of miniscule drops of dew on flowers. Alberto Ghizzi Panizza, 40, has been a photographer for 18 years and specializes in macro images. All of these pictures were taken on the riverbanks of the Po River, in northern Italy, as Panizza pursued his passion for nature. “I'm deeply fond of nature and animals and always look for the beauty in the world around us”, Panizza said. (Photo by Alberto Ghizzi Panizza/Caters News)