| Best Photos of the Past Year |
| 1. Swallowed Hole! |
| A rainbow trout fingerling peers out from the gullet of a northern pike at the Alaska Department of Fish & Game aquarium in Anchorage. |
| 2. A Romp in Russia |
| A polar bear cub plays near his mother at the Moscow Zoo. |
| 3. Moonshot |
| Flying at nearly 35,000 feet, a jet passes over the disk of a winter half moon above Boston on Jan. 3 The jet leaves contrails in its wake due to the temperature difference between the hot engine exhaust and the cold air. |
| 4. Red Square Reflection |
| The Kremlin's Spassky Tower and passers-by are reflected in the wet cobblestones of Moscow's Red Square on Feb. 13. |
| 5. A Galaxy's Sharp Edge |
| An image produced by the Hubble Space Telescope, released March 1, shows a perfect "edge-on" perspective of the galaxy NGC 4013, with huge clouds of dust and gas extending above the galaxy's main disk. |
| 6. Light of the World |
| This composite image shows what Earth looks like at night. City lights highlight developed areas of the planet. |
| 7. Mother and Child |
| An ethnic Albanian refugee from Selce, Macedonia, and her child look through the window of a bus as they arrive in Prizren in Kosovo on March 27, after fleeing the fighting in Macedonia two days earlier. |
| 8. A Useful Lesson |
| A German Shepherd named Pepper sits with two endangered Bengal tiger cubs and a cougar cub, far right, at the home of veterinarian Rob Zammit outside Sydney, Australia. |
| 9. Great White Whale |
| A beluga whale swims in a tank at the Vancouver Aquarium. |
| 10. Puppy Love |
| Crystal, a year-old black Labrador-Dalmatian mix, peers through a heart-shaped hole in a fence. |
| The Gathering Storm |
| Dark clouds roll over Blair, Neb., on May 9, bringing thunder and flashes of lightning. |
| 12. The Little Duckling Who Could |
| Mallard ducklings wait their turn May 14 as a sibling struggles to make it up a curb in South Bend, Ind. The mother, who had already cleared the obstacle, flirted with traffic for 20 minutes before leading her offspring safely across the busy road. |
| 13. MidEast Flare-Up |
| A Palestinian youth uses a slingshot to fire stones at Israeli soldiers from behind a barricade of burning tires May 23. |
| 14. Rainbow Times Two |
| An afternoon storm brought a double rainbow over downtown Chillicothe, Ohio, on May 27. |
| 15. Fury From Above |
| Lightning ripples over the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas, on June 14 |
| 16. Grand Old Night |
| Tanner Mann, 8, of Hortonville, Wis., gets a good seat on top of his mother's car July 4 for the fireworks show at Riverside Park in New London. |
| 17. Un-Bear-Able Heat |
| Koluk the polar bear goes headfirst into the pool at the Albuquerque Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque, N.M., on July 15. |
| 18. Stellar Light Show |
| From ground-based telescopes, the "ant nebula" resembles the head and thorax of a garden ant. |
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