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An ash plume drifts from Mount Cleveland, a stratovolcano in the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska, on May 23, 2006. Astronaut Jeffrey Williams, flying over the event on board the International Space Station, was the first to notice the eruption, even before the Alaska Volcano Observatory.Photo credit: Jeffrey Williams

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The Cone Nebula is located about 2,600 light-years from Earth in the constellation Monoceros and is so named because of its apparent shape. The cone's shape comes from a dark nebula consisting of cold molecular hydrogen and dust in front of a faint emission nebula containing hydrogen ionized by S Monocerotis, the brightest star of NGC 2264, of which the nebula is part. This image shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the 7 light-year-long Cone Nebula.Photo credit: Hubble Space Telescope

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Summit of the Chachani (on the left, elevation 6,057 metres or 19,872 feet), and Mt. Fatima (highest point), the highest of three volcanoes above Arequipa, Peru. The path to reach the summit can be seen, going almost to the top of Mt. Fatima first. Because this region is extremely arid, the mountain is almost entirely devoid of snow.Photo credit: Alexandre Buisse

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A structural worker bolts beams on the framework during the construction of the Empire State Building in New York City. The 1,250-foot (380 m) building opened on May 1, 1931, at the time the tallest building in the world, overtaking the Chrysler Building (seen to the right), which had just been completed the year before. The addition of a pinnacle and antennas later increased its overall height to 1,472 feet (449 m).Image credit: Lewis Hine

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A radar image of the surface of Venus, centered at 180 degrees east longitude. This composite image was created from mapping by the Magellan probe, supplemented by data gathered by the Pioneer orbiter, with simulated hues based on color images recorded by Venera 13 and 14. No probe has been able to survive more than a few hours on Venus's surface, which is completely obscured by clouds, because the atmospheric pressure is some 90 times that of the Earth's, and its surface temperature is around 450 °C (842 °F).Image credit: NASA

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NGC 1300 is a barred spiral galaxy located roughly 69 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Eridanus. In its core, the nucleus shows its own extraordinary and distinct "grand-design" spiral structure that is about 3,300 light-years long.Photo credit: Hubble Space Telescope

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The eruption cloud of Mount Redoubt, an active stratovolcano found in the Chigmit Mountains of the U.S. state of Alaska, seen here from the Kenai Peninsula four months after it began erupting on December 14, 1989. This eruption was the first ever to be successfully predicted through the observation of long-period seismic events.Photo credit: R. Clucas, USGS

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A false-color far- infrared composite image of the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. The image consists of 11,000 separate exposures taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope's Multiband Imaging Photometer at 24  micrometres. The image is dominated by emission from hot cosmic dust; this is the sharpest image ever taken of this component of the interstellar medium in another galaxy. This is in dramatic contrast to the more-familiar view at visible wavelengths, which is dominated by starlight.Image credit: NASA/ JPL- Caltech/K. Gordon ( University of Arizona)

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A person traverses in front of a limestone wall at Pamukkale, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in southwestern Turkey. Meaning "cotton castle", Pamukkale was the site of the ancient city of Hierapolis and is now a tourist attraction, known for its hot springs that bubble up into pools in the limestone.Photo credit: Mila Zinkova

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A view from space of an explosive eruption of Sarychev Peak on June 12, 2009. The volcano is the central peak of Matua, an uninhabited island in the Kuril archipelago in the Sea of Okhotsk east of Russia and north of Japan. During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army had an airfield on the island, which was taken over by the Soviet Border Troops after the war and abandoned in 1999.Photo: NASA

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Cupha erymanthis is a species of brush-footed butterfly found in forested areas of tropical South and Southeast Asia which may feed on liquids from carrion. This specimen was photographed in Kadavoor, Kerala, India.Photograph: Jkadavoor

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NGC 2467 is a star-forming region with a visual appearance often likened to a skull or a mandrill. Located in the southern constellation of Puppis, it contains the open clusters Haffner 18 (centre) and Haffner 19 (middle right: located inside the smaller pink "eye"), as well as vast areas of ionised gas. The bright star at the centre of the largest pink region is HD 64315, a massive young star that is helping to shape the whole nebular region's structure.Photograph: European Southern Observatory

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The slender mongoose (Galerella sanguinea) is a common species of mongoose found throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa. Dozens of subspecies are known, and the fur color varies between subspecies. The slender mongoose tends to live alone or in pairs, and, although it is an opportunistic omnivore, it feeds primarily on insects.

This specimen was photographed at the Prague Zoo in the Czech Republic.Photo: Karel Jakubec

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The European bee-eater (Merops apiaster) is a near passerine bird in the bee-eater family Meropidae which breeds in southern Europe and in parts of north Africa and western Asia and winters in tropical Africa, India and Sri Lanka. The species predominantly feeds on insects, especially bees, wasps and hornets, which are caught in the air by sorties from an open perch.Photo: Pierre Dalous

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The central part of the ceiling at the Galerie des Batailles, a 120-by-13-metre (394 by 43 ft) gallery at the Palace of Versailles joining onto the grand and petit appartements de la reine. Designed by Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine and Frédéric Nepveu upon the order of Louis Philippe I, the gallery's design includes a wide cornice supporting a coffered painted ceiling with entablatures supported by Corinthian columns along the length of the gallery.Photo: -donald-

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The harlequin beetle (Acrocinus longimanus) is a large tropical longhorn beetle native to the Americas. The species' common name is derived from the elaborate pattern of black, red and greenish yellow markings on the wing covers of both sexes.Photograph: Didier Descouens

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Loligo forbesii is a commercially important species of squid in the family Loliginidae. It can be found in the seas around Europe, its range extending through the Red Sea toward the East African coast. The squid lives at depths of 10 to 500 m (30 to 1,600 ft), feeding on fish, polychaetes, crustaceans, and other cephalopods.Illustration: Comingio Merculiano