The Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) is seen in the sky in Ivalo of Lapland, Finland on September 27, 2019. (Photo by Alexander Kuznetsov/Reuters)

A pedestrian walks with an umbrella along a street during rainfall in Bengaluru on June 2, 2024. (Photo by Idrees Mohammed/AFP Photo)

White House Press Secretary James Brady and District of Columbia police officer Thomas Delahanty lie wounded on the ground after John Hinckley Jr. fired six shots at President Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC, on March 30, 1981. (Photo by Courtesy Reagan Library via Reuters)

“Still” also known as the “Mirror Man”, created by artist Rob Mulholland which symbolises the physical and spiritual relationship between humans and the natural world, has returned to Loch Earn in St. Fillans on May 9, 2025 after being removed in 2017 due to storm damage. (Photo by Lesley Martin)

A picture of Moon Ji-sung, a high school student who died in the Sewol ferry disaster, hangs in her room in Ansan April 7, 2015. Her dream was to be a flight attendant. Nearly a year after the Sewol ferry sank on April 16, 2014, with the death of 250 students, some families keep their children’s bedrooms intact to remember and honour their loved ones. More than 300 people, most of them students and teachers from Danwon High School, are dead, or missing and presumed dead, after the Sewol ferry sank on a routine trip from the port of Incheon, near Seoul, to the holiday island of Jeju. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

Saint Nicholas poses with students during a traditional parade in central Brussels, Belgium December 3, 2016. (Photo by Yves Herman/Reuters)

The Villarrica Volcano is seen at night from Pucon town, Chile, July 12, 2015. Villarrica, located near the popular tourist resort of Pucon, is among the most active volcanoes in South America. (Photo by Cristobal Saavedra/Reuters)

Merit: A Night at Deadvlei. The night before returning to Windhoek, we spent several hours at Deadveli. The moon was bright enough to illuminate the sand dunes in the distance, but the skies were still dark enough to clearly see the milky way and magellanic clouds. Deadveli means “dead marsh. The camelthorn trees are believed to be about 900 years old, but have not decomposed because the environment is so dry. (Photo and caption by Beth McCarley/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)