This eye-catching image of the planetary nebula Abell 33 was taken by astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. Created when an ageing star blew off its outer layers, this beautiful blue bubble is, by chance, aligned with a foreground star. This cosmic gem is unusually symmetric, appearing to be almost perfectly circular on the sky.

A farmer tends to an onion crop on the slopes of Mount Cereme, Majalengka, West Java, Indonesia.

by tangyaohoong

A bridge collapse caused a train to fall into a canal Thursday,July 2 killing 12 Pakistani solders.

We quietly approached the mother and baby humpback whale keeping to the surface, yet making our presence aware to the mother. This is a baby humpback whale calf that was approximately 1 week old. As with most babies, this creature was curious. I could not help but wave and smile at the newborn whale almost three times my length. Its curiosity got the better of it, and emerging from under it's mother's fin it swam towards me, approaching less than 30 centimeters from my face.

Having a dream is a great place to start.

People walk on a hill covered with nemophila flowers in full bloom at Hitachi Seaside Park in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan.

Photo by Denis Budkov

Bioluminescent Plankton in Iran, by Pooyan Shadpoor

Jasper National Park has a great variety of scenic waterfalls and each has its own unique charm due to its geological makeup. The steps of the Tangle Falls is what make this sight so photogenic. The water literally cascades, not falls, over various tiers.

Long before the $5 shake, this one was probably closer to $.50.

Maly Semyachik is a stratovolcano located in the eastern part of Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. Three overlapping stratovolcanoes were constructed sequentially along a NE-SW line, with the youngest cone, Tseno-Semyachik, at the southwest end. A hot, acidic crater lake fills the historically active Troitsky Crater, which formed during a large explosive eruption of Ceno-Semiachik about 400 years ago.

I shot this a bit over a week ago during a trip to Rhode Island; I didn't realize that this picture came out quite so well until I came back home.