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Ethereal Spiral

A mystifying swirl of light recently appeared in the night sky above Alaska, briefly outshining a vibrant auroral display. The bizarre spiral appeared above Alaska on April 15. An ethereal whirlpool of light recently appeared in the night sky above Alaska, briefly stealing the limelight from a strong auroral display. But the bizarre, spiral-shaped object had nothing to do with the dancing polar lights.

Instead, the luminous vortex was just the latest example of what astronomers have nicknamed “SpaceX spirals,” which are becoming an increasingly common sight for stargazers across the globe. These spirals form when rocket fuel, which is ejected from the fast-spinning upper stages of Falcon 9 rockets, gets frozen in space. These frozen swirls then reflect sunlight back towards Earth, which makes them visible to stunned onlookers on the ground.

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A satellite image captured by Landsat 8 shows Mount Vesuvius “peering” through an eerily circular hole in the clouds.

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A resident of Hoboken, New Jersey spotted the unusual worm spiral after days of heavy rainfall.

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Wildlife During Lockdown

A white-bellied pangolin that was rescued from animal traffickers is seen at the Uganda Wildlife Authority office in Kampala, Uganda.

A squirrel runs across a fence as the sun shines in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district.

A fruit bat eats lettuce as it hangs from a rope during a behind-the-scenes interactive live stream from Oakland zoo in California, US, which remains closed to the public.

Nemophila flowers at Hitachi Seaside Park in Hitachinaka, Japan. The park has been closed to the public since 4 April to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

For the first time in decades, bald eagles have been found nesting in a saguaro cactus in Arizona, US. Kenneth ‘Tuk’ Jacobson, the Arizona game and fish department’s coordinator of raptor management, called the find ‘amazing’. According to Jacobson, the last known mention of such a sighting was in 1937.

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Some Wildlife Photography Award Finalists

A hunting Pallas’ cat in the Mongolian grasslands.

A mother polar bear and her cubs in Wapusk National Park, Manitoba,

A humpback whale feeding off the coast of Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada

Some well-disguised reindeer in Svalbard, Norway.

An orangutan being forced to box in a show in Safari World, Bangkok.

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Smooth balls of ice rolled ashore on a beach in Finland and piled up like a gigantic clutch of turtles’ eggs. Although fairly rare, these ice eggs form similarly to sea glass or rounded stones that wash up on the beach, said BBC Weather expert George Goodfellow. Chunks of ice break off from larger ice sheets in the sea and either taxi to shore on the incoming tide or get pushed in by gusts of wind at the water’s surface, he explained. Waves buffet the ice chunks as they travel, slowly eroding their jagged edges into smooth curves. Seawater sticks and freezes to the forming eggs, causing them to grow like snowballs do as they roll across the ground. Once the ice chunks reach shore, pounding waves tend to buff out any lingering kinks on their surfaces, leaving behind nothing but sleek and shiny “eggs” for curious tourists to happen upon.

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A trio of divers off the western coast of Norway had a close encounter with a drifting gelatinous blob — a squid’s egg sac as big as an adult human, filled with hundreds of thousands of baby squid.

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A recent sunset photo stunned viewers. An unusual optical effect made the sunset resemble a split-screen image showing two very different skies side by side.

Though it looks unnatural, the so-called split sunset wasn’t created with filters or Photoshop. Rather, it was caused by the shadow of a large cloud below the horizon that prevented sunlight from striking the clouds that were closer to viewers on the ground. The photo was shot in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

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Against the star-spattered backdrop of the night sky in Russia, glowing green lights of a spectacular aurora rise in the shape of a giant firebird, its wings spread over an abandoned military power station.

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Image of a woodpecker stashing away its acorn supply.

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The symmetry between the reflection and the majestic bald eagle defiantly gazing into the camera make this image exceptional.

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A still from a remote video camera shows two bald eagle chicks with a parent on a nest in the Angeles National Forest near Big Bear in southern California, USA.

On a more mischievous note, an octopus has snatched a dishwashing brush during spring cleaning at the Sea Life aquarium in Timmendorfer Strand, northern Germany.

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Living ‘Balloon on a String’

The depths of the Indian Ocean are home to some bizarre creatures — including one that looks like a balloon on a string. Explorers captured a video of this gelatinous creature in a recent dive to the Java Trench, the bottommost part of the Indian Ocean.

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Swimming in the open ocean entangled this loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) in a dangerous trap posed by a discarded fishing net. Luckily, photographer Eduardo Acevedo encountered the turtle near the Canary Islands, and released her from the net after capturing this striking image.

This tiny sea slug, the Cyerce nigra was photographed near the Philippines. This photo allows us to enjoy the visual feast of a creature too small to appreciate with the naked eye.

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Fireball at Yosemite

As meltwater plunges 1,500 feet (457 meters) to the ground from the El Capitan rock formation in February, the setting sun throws its light against the falls. If the sky is clear and the sun is positioned precisely in the western sky, that setting sunlight paints the the water with fiery orange, yellow and pink light.

Dragon and Phoenix Auroras over Iceland