Alan Taylor

David Mareuil / Anadolu / Getty
Frost-covered conifers called “snow monsters,” or juhyo in Japanese, are illuminated by spotlights that sit on a slope of Mount Zao on the night of February 8, 2022, in Yamagata prefecture, Tohoku region, Japan.WhitcombeRD / Getty
Frozen “snow monsters” stand on a mountain slope in Japan.Carl Court / Getty
Strangely shaped snow-covered trees, nicknamed “snow monsters,” are silhouetted by the setting sun at the summit of Mount Zao on January 19, 2019.

Javier Torres / AFP / Getty
Venezuelans living in Chile celebrate in Santiago on January 3, 2026, after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.Natacha Pisarenko / AP
In Argentina, Venezuelans celebrate the capture of Maduro, gathering at the Obelisk of Buenos Aires on January 3, 2026.Natacha Pisarenko / AP
Venezuelans celebrate at the Obelisk of Buenos Aires on January 3, 2026.Pablo Sanhueza / Reuters
In Santiago, Chile, a woman celebrates the announcement that the U.S.

Gary Miller / Getty
People watch as Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano erupts on May 11, 2025.Gary Miller / Getty
A closer view of Kīlauea volcano erupting in Hawaii on May 11, 2025Arnold Welianto / AFP / Getty
Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki erupts, pictured from Pululera village, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, on August 18, 2025.AFP / Getty
A villager watches the eruption of Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki from Talibura village in Sikka, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, on June 17, 2025.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Joseph DePasquale, Alyssa Pagan
Day 25 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: Dusty Pillars. This is the James Webb Space Telescope’s mid-infrared view of the Pillars of Creation, trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, about 7,000 light-years away. The mid-infrared view allows scientists to focus on the dense dust in the star-forming regions within these massive pillars.
See the full advent calendar here.

ESA / Webb, NASA & CSA, H. Atek, M. Zamani
Day 24 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A Gravitational Lens. Galaxies in this James Webb Space Telescope image appear to be stretched into arcs and lines, their appearance warped and magnified by powerful gravitational lensing in Galaxy Cluster Abell S1063, which bends the light of more distant galaxies as it passes through on its way to Earth.
See the full advent calendar here, where a new image will be revealed each day until December 25.

ESA / Hubble & NASA, M. Postman, P. Kelly
Day 21 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: Warped Space. This Hubble view of Galaxy Cluster Abell 209, about 2.8 billion light-years away, shows more than 100 galaxies. The incredible mass of the galaxies together warps and magnifies images of background galaxies and stars in a process called gravitational lensing, which can be seen in the stretched and smeared clumps toward the center of the image.

NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, J. DePasquale
Day 20 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: The Cosmic Cliffs. The James Webb Space Telescope peered inside a region at the edge of a gigantic gaseous cavity within the star cluster NGC 3324. The cluster, about 9,100 light-years away, near the Carina Nebula, is believed to be fairly young, only about 12 million years old.
See the full advent calendar here, where a new image will be revealed each day until December 25.

ESA / Hubble & NASA, L. Kelsey
Day 14 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: Ripples of a Galactic Merger. The Hubble Space Telescope recently gathered this image of lenticular galaxy NGC 4753, about 60 million light-years away. Scientists believe this object to be the result of an earlier merging of two galaxies, which is still flattening and throwing off waves of dust lanes.
See the full advent calendar here, where a new image will be revealed each day until December 25.

ESA / Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Rihtaršič, R. Tripodi
Day 13 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A Sea of Galaxies. The James Webb Space Telescope pointed its Near-Infrared Camera toward the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+2223 and captured this image of hundreds of galaxies at varying distances and of different sizes, shapes, and colors—showing only a small section of the cluster.
See the full advent calendar here, where a new image will be revealed each day until December 25.

ESA / Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Mahler
Day 7 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A Warped View Through an Einstein Ring. You are seeing two galaxies here, one in front of the other. The more distant spiral galaxy appears warped and distorted due to the gravitational lensing occurring around a massive, much closer galaxy, which is part of galaxy cluster SMACSJ0028.2-7537.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, Caltech, UCLA
Day 6 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: The Shell of a Dying Star. About 1,500 light-years from Earth, a dying star at the heart of planetary nebula NGC 1514 is performing a spectacular final act. One of a pair of binary stars has been shedding huge amounts of gas and dust for more than 4,000 years, blasting into the surrounding space and lighting it up from within.

ESA / Hubble & NASA, G. Duchêne
Day 2 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a stellar nursery. Reflection nebula GN 04.32.8 is part of the stellar nursery called the Taurus Molecular Cloud, roughly 480 light-years from Earth. Enormous clouds of dust surround a group of chaotic young stars, illuminated by their starlight.

ESA / Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Villenave et al.
A Cosmic Butterfly. In August, the James Webb Space Telescope provided this new view of IRAS 04302+2247, a planet-forming disk about 525 light-years away. This protoplanetary disk, a structure that is several times the diameter of our solar system, can be seen at center, encircling a protostar—a young star that is still gathering mass from its environment, possibly forming new planets.

Amarjeet Kumar Singh / Anadolu / Getty
Silhouettes of people and monkeys make their way past India Gate amid smoggy conditions in New Delhi, India, on October 22, 2025. Thick smog blanketed the city, with Delhi’s air-quality index dropping to 345, placing it in the “very poor” category.Bhawika Chhabra / Reuters
A farmer burns stubble in a field in the northern state of Punjab, India, on November 13, 2025.

Liang Sen / Xinhua / Getty
People view a light show during a media preview of “Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience,” at Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on November 6, 2025. The immersive outdoor event allows visitors to explore a themed trail inspired by the Forbidden Forest from the Harry Potter films.Charlie Riedel / AP
A person walks past a maple tree displaying fall colors on November 7, 2025, in Kansas City, Missouri.

© Douglas Gimesy / cupoty.com
Splash. Shortlisted in the Animals category. A grey-headed flying fox makes a high-speed belly-dip in a pool of water.© Clay Bolt / cupoty.com
Orchid Bee Colombia. Insects.
© Marek Pál / cupoty.com
Sharp Bend. Insects.© Roman Willi / cupoty.com
Frog in the wall. Animals.© Donald Bolak / cupoty.com
Rose Thorns. Plants. A macro shot of a single rose thorn.© Nataliia Shinkevich / cupoty.com
Sunrise. Arachnids.© Jacqueline Kirk / cupoty.com
Island Hare. Animals.

Updated at 12:30 p.m. ET on October 19, 2025
Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty
A person dressed in a Statue of Liberty costume participates in a “No Kings” national day of protest in New York on October 18, 2025.Alyssa Pointer / Reuters
People attend a “No Kings” protest against American President Donald Trump’s policies, in Atlanta on October 18, 2025.Alyssa Pointer / Reuters
A person looks on during the “No Kings” protest in Atlanta on October 18, 2025.

Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty
A person dressed in a Statue of Liberty costume participates in a “No Kings” national day of protest in New York on October 18, 2025.Alyssa Pointer / Reuters
People attend a “No Kings” protest against American President Donald Trump’s policies, in Atlanta on October 18, 2025.Alyssa Pointer / Reuters
A person looks on during the “No Kings” protest in Atlanta on October 18, 2025.

Sunil Pradhan / Anadolu / Getty
A protester carrying a Nepalese flag hangs a pirate flag as smoke and flames rise from the Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepal’s government, in Kathmandu, Nepal, on September 9, 2025.Ambir Tolang / NurPhoto / Getty
Young protesters demonstrate against corruption and the ban on social-media platforms by the government in Kathmandu, Nepal, on September 8, 2025.

Jack Vincent Picone / Fairfax Media / Getty
Delphine Anderson bids farewell to her 6-year-old son Alexis on the first day of school in Australia on February 1, 1989.Andrew Craft / USA Today Network / Reuters
Members of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity cheer on students as they arrive for the first day of school at Margaret Willis Elementary School in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Monday, August 25, 2025.Ronald W.

© Jamie Smart / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Rutting Call. Highly Commended, 10 Years and Under. Jamie Smart portrays a red deer stag as it gives a mighty bellow during the autumn rut in Bradgate Park in Leicestershire, England. Jamie walked up and down a path in the park at a safe distance from the stag. She stretched herself up tall to avoid any long grass in the foreground spoiling her view.© Leana Kuster / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Pink Pose. Highly Commended, 15–17 Years.

Jade Gao / AFP / Getty
Italy’s team competes in the mixed aerobic group final during the 2025 World Games at the Dong’an Lake Sports Park Multi-Function Gymnasium in Chengdu, in China’s Sichuan province, on August 15, 2025.Jade Gao / AFP / Getty
Taiwan’s Chang Yu-Hsin (center) competes in the women’s 15,000-meter speed-skating-road elimination final during the 2025 World Games at Shuyue Park in Chengdu on August 13, 2025.

Pedro Nunes / Reuters
People look on as a wildfire approaches in Trancoso, Portugal, on August 13, 2025.Patricia De Melo Moreira / AFP / Getty
A man tries to extinguish a wildfire with a tree branch in Trancoso on August 12, 2025.Marcelo Del Pozo / Reuters
A person watches as a helicopter draws water at Atlanterra Beach on August 12, 2025, a day after many locals and tourists were evacuated from Tarifa, Spain, because of wildfires.

Nichole Ayers / NASA
Green and red displays from the southern lights (aurora australis) appear above the Earth, seen from the orbiting International Space Station, south of Australia, on April 21, 2025.Nichole Ayers / NASA
Lightning flashes among cloud formations above Indonesia, seen on June 22, 2025.

Mohammed Y. M. Al-yaqoubi / Anadolu / Getty
Five-year-old Lana Salih Juha, who fled with her family from Gaza’s Shuja’iyya neighborhood to the city center, suffers from severe malnutrition, seen on July 28, 2025. Her family is calling for urgent help to ensure she receives proper treatment and nutrition.United Nations agencies are now warning that the hunger crisis in Gaza is evolving into a famine, with growing evidence of starvation and malnutrition.

Aufort Jerome / Getty
An aerial view of Guédelon Castle in Treigny, France, in 2023Jacky Naegelen / Hans Lucas / Reuters
Stonecutters work at the construction site of the Château de Guédelon on June 25, 2005.Xavier Rossi / Gamma-Rapho / Getty
A person in medieval-style clothing observes the building site of Guédelon Castle in June 2002.Thierry Perrin / Gamma-Rapho / Getty
A blacksmith in period attire works at the Guédelon Castle site on April 12, 2018.

Jim Vondruska / Getty
Search-and-rescue workers dig through debris looking for any survivors or remains of people swept up in the flash flooding on July 6, 2025, in Hunt, Texas. Heavy rainfall caused flooding along the Guadalupe River in central Texas with multiple fatalities reported.Sergio Flores / Reuters
A tree is wrapped in roots and branches after a deadly flood in Kerr County, Texas, on July 5, 2025.

Nichole Ayers / NASA
Earlier this week, the NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured an amazing image of a sprite, a rarely photographed weather phenomenon, as the International Space Station passed above a storm over Mexico. Ayers wrote: “Sprites are TLEs, or Transient Luminous Events, that happen above the clouds and are triggered by intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below.

Nic Coury / AFP / Getty
Demonstrators hold signs as they march down Dolores Street protesting the Trump administration during the “No Kings” rally in San Francisco on June 14, 2025.Fritz Nordengren / ZUMA Press Wire / Reuters
A protester carries an “Impeach Trump” sign among others in front of the Iowa State Capitol during the “No Kings” mass protest in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 14, 2025.

Mario Tama / Getty
An aerial view of properties cleared of wildfire debris that were burned in the Eaton Fire on May 22, 2025, in Altadena, California. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it has cleared 5,000 properties in the Eaton Fire and Palisades Fire burn zones, which represents half of the eligible properties, in just three months.