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.
Marco Restivo / Reuters
Volcanic ash and steam rise from Mount Etna, as seen from Milo, Italy, on June 2, 2025.Fabrizio Villa / Getty
A volcanic plume rises from the southeast crater of Mount Etna on June 2, 2025, seen from Catania, Italy.Marco Restivo / Reuters
Plumes of volcanic ash rise from Mount Etna, as seen from Milo, Italy, on June 2, 2025.Salvatore Allegra / Anadolu / Getty
A cloud of ash and gas rises as Etna erupts again, seen in Nicolosi, near Catania, on June 2, 2025.
Alexandre Agrusti / AFP / Getty
This photograph shows the remaining buildings of the village of Blatten, in the Swiss Alps, buried by a landslide, on May 29, 2025. Blatten residents were evacuated last week after several smaller landslides, but one person remains missing. Rising floodwater from the blocked Lonza river is now inundating the few surviving buildings and threatening downstream villages.
Bettmann / Getty
National Parks Service worker James Hudson uses a cloth-wrapped pole to clean the ear of the statue at the Lincoln Memorial in 1987.Gary Hershorn / Getty
Maintenance workers clean a statue in Central Park, in New York City, in 2016.Anton Vaganov / Reuters
A municipal worker scrubs a statue of the Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 2023.
Vadim Ghirda / AP
Bismarck the sphynx closes its eyes while being examined by a judge during an international feline beauty competition in Bucharest, Romania, on May 10, 2025.Robert Nickelsberg / Getty
A subway passenger reads messages on his phone in front of a mural of the artist William Wegman’s famous Weimaraner at the 23rd Street MTA station on May 9, 2025, in New York City.
Yasuyoshi Chiba, a photojournalist with AFP, recently spent a rainy day in Jakarta with three men who had coated themselves in metallic paint, becoming “manusia silver,” or silvermen, seeking donations from passersby. Rising prices and growing levels of unemployment have resulted in a recent rise in begging across Jakarta. The group followed here say that on a good day, they can earn as much as 200,000 rupiah ($12).
Miles Brothers / U.S. National Archives
Several members of the group gather around a campfire while in Alaska’s copper country. Original caption: “Camp fire yarns.”Miles Brothers / U.S. National Archives
In June of 1902, the Miles Brothers boarded the steam schooner Santa Ana, sailing north to Valdez, with others.Miles Brothers / U.S. National Archives
Original caption: “Yakutat natives selling curios aboard the steamer.”Miles Brothers / U.S.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Olmsted, S. Carniani, JADES Collaboration
Day 25 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: the most distant known galaxy. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have found a record-breaking distant galaxy observed just 290 million years after the Big Bang.
ESA / Webb, NASA and CSA, P. Zeidler, E. Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani
Day 24 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: an energetic stellar nursery. This new image from the James Webb Space Telescope features the young star cluster NGC 602, surrounded by the varied clouds of a nebula, near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, about 200,000 light-years from Earth.
ESA / Hubble & NASA, R. Windhorst, W. Keel
Day 22 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: the edge of a spiral. Located roughly 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, UGC 10043 is one of the somewhat rare spiral galaxies that are seen edge-on. From this point of view, we see the galaxy’s disk as a sharp line through space, overlaid with a prominent dust lane. One can see the lights of some active star-forming regions in the arms, shining out from behind the dust.
NASA, ESA, STScI / AURA
Day 21 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: inside a chaotic nebula. Sharpless 2-106 is a nebula several light-years across, seen here by Hubble in 2011. It lies 2,000 light-years away, in a relatively isolated region of the Milky Way galaxy. A massive young star is responsible for the furious activity we see inside the nebula. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Lee, T. Williams, PHANGS Team
Day 16 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a new view of a distant spiral. This image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows spiral galaxy NGC 628 in a new light. The galaxy, also known as Messier 74, lies about 32 million light-years away, and was first discovered in 1780.
ESA / Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Scholz, K. Muzic, A. Langeveld, R. Jayawardhana
Day 15 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: glowing from within. This mosaic of images from the James Webb Space Telescope showcases the nearby star-forming cluster, NGC 1333, about 960 light-years away, in the Perseus molecular cloud. Across the image we see large patches of orange, which represent gas glowing in the infrared.
ESA / Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Zamani, M. G. Guarcello
Day 14 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a sky full of stars. The open cluster Westerlund 1 is located roughly 12,000 light-years away, residing behind a huge interstellar cloud of gas and dust.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and M. Zamani
Day 13 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a cloud in the deep sky. This image, featuring the central region of the Chameleon I dark molecular cloud, about 630 light-years away, was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Cold, wispy blue clouds are illuminated in the infrared by the glow of the young, outflowing protostar Ced 110 IRS 4 (orange, upper left).
ESA / Webb, NASA, CSA, A. Hirschauer, M. Meixner
Day 10 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: the glow of hot, young stars. The James Webb Space Telescope captured a spectacular view of the galaxy I Zwicky 18 (I Zw 18). This galaxy, roughly 59 million light-years away, is typical of the kinds of galaxies that inhabited the early universe and is classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy. Two major starburst regions are embedded in the galaxy’s heart.
NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team
Day 8 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a mysterious nebula. Details of a complex structure within the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) are revealed by this image of the Keyhole Nebula, obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture is dominated by a large, approximately circular feature, which is part of the Keyhole Nebula.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Day 7 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a supernova seen thrice. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam viewed the galaxy cluster PLCK G165.7+67.0, also known as G165. In this image, a foreground cluster located 3.6 billion light-years away from Earth is magnifying and bending the light of the distant universe beyond through gravitational lensing.
ESA / Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton / DOE / FNAL / DECam / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA
Day 6 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a galactic collision. This Hubble image features Arp 122, a galaxy that actually comprises two vast galaxies colliding with each other—NGC 6040, the tilted, warped spiral galaxy at left, and LEDA 59642, the round, face-on spiral galaxy at right.
NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon, M. H. Wong, J. DePasquale
Day 4 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A prominent string of alternating storms is visible across the low northern latitudes of Jupiter, forming a “vortex street,” as some planetary astronomers call it. Hubble recently observed this wave pattern of nested cyclones and anticyclones, locked together like alternating gears.
ESA / Hubble & NASA, L. Kelsey
Day 3 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: The Hubble Space Telescope brings us this nearly edge-on view of the lenticular galaxy NGC 4753. Lenticular galaxies have an elliptical shape and ill-defined spiral arms. NGC 4753 sits about 60 million light-years from Earth, and is believed to have merged with a nearby dwarf galaxy about 1.3 billion years ago, creating the distinctive wavy dust lanes around its nucleus.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, K. Pontoppidan, J. Green
Day 2 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: This image shows the center of the Serpens Nebula, as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-InfraRed Camera. The Serpens Nebula, located 1,300 light-years from Earth, is home to a particularly dense cluster of newly forming stars, some of which will eventually grow to the mass of our sun.
Christophe Ena / AP
The teams of France and Argentina compete during the blind-football gold-medal match in Paris on the last day of the 2024 Paralympic Games. After reaching a 1–1 draw in regular time, France went on to win the game and the medal in a penalty shootout.
David Ramos / Getty
Gold-medalist Mauricio Valencia of Team Colombia poses for a photo during the medal ceremony for the men’s shot put F34 final on day 10 of the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games. Valencia had his canine teeth modified to look like fangs in order to break down any stereotypes people may have about Paralympic athletes. He says, “I didn’t want to have the same smile as the rest of the world. I’ve always said that Paralympic sport has to be a spectacle.
Ezra Shaw / Getty
From left: Silver medalist Johannes Floors of Team Germany, gold medalist Hunter Woodhall of Team USA, and bronze medalist Olivier Hendriks of Team Netherlands pose for a photo after the men’s para-athletics 400m T62 final race, on day nine of the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games.
Michael Steele / Getty
Oksana Masters of Team USA celebrates winning the Women’s H5 Road Race on day eight of the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games, on September 5, 2024. This win is Masters’ second gold medal of the 2024 Paralympic Games, after she placed first in the Para Cycling Road Women’s H4-5 Individual Time Trial the day before.
Emilio Morenatti / AP
Diego Meneses, of Colombia, competes in the Men’s Javelin Throw F34 Final at the Stade de France stadium during the 2024 Paralympics, on September 4, 2024. Meneses won the bronze medal in the event.
Steph Chambers / Getty
Kinga Dróżdż of Team Poland competes against Xufeng Zou of Team China during the Women’s Sabre Category A fencing quarterfinals on day six of the Paris 2024 Summer Paralympic Games at the Grand Palais. In wheelchair fencing matches, competitors are seated in opposing wheelchairs that are fixed to a platform, ensuring close-combat tactics and limiting their ability to dodge attacks. In the sabre and épée categories, hits above the waist are counted.