amazing science images you must see

Care for a swim? Perhaps not in this sulfur lake, found near the Dallol volcano in the Danakil Depression of Ethiopia. The landscape is not unlike Yellowstone National Parks hot springs, with small geysers and mineral rich pools dotting the landscape. This lake is ringed in yellow due to high concentrations of natural sulfur, known in ancient times as brimstone. If lakes of sulfur arent hellish enough for you, consider this: The nearby mining settlement of Dallol, now a ghost town, holds the record high average temperature for an inhabited location. An annual average temperature of 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34 degrees Celsius) was recorded in Dallol in the 1960s, shortly before the town was abandoned.

Like tie dye on the water, blue and green swirls decorate the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway in this Aug. 14 image. The colors are created by a massivephytoplankton bloom. This image, captured by NASAs Aqua satellite, reveals a distinctive milky blue color often associated with plankton called coccolithophores.

Flood waters from Hurricane Irene breach North Carolinas Hatteras Island, cutting through Highway 12, the road connecting the island to the mainland.This photo, taken Aug. 28 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is part of a larger project to assess the damage Irene caused to the East Coast. The hurricane came ashore near Cape Lookout on North Carolinas Outer Banks on Aug. 27 before heading toward New Jersey and New York.

Looking for a piece of abstract art for the living room? Look no further than Mother Nature.Italian geoscientist Bernardo Cesaretakes photomicrographs of regular rocks, transforming them with the use of special filters into stained glass hues. Cesare, who is now selling his photographs in the U.S.via his website, thinks of himself as less an artist than a reporter, painstakingly coaxing brilliant colors out of tiny slices of stone.

A gelatinous nudibranch (Janolus barbarensis) adds a splash of color to the ocean in Morro Bay, Calif. Nudibranches are ocean dwelling mollusks without shells; theyre often called sea slugs, but some sea slugs are in a family of their own, unrelated to the 3,000 or so species of nudibranch. Marine scientists believe that the colors on nudibranches keep predators at bay, much like a neon sign reading, Tastes terrible, do not eat! And indeed, some nudibranches store up toxins from their diet of poisonous sponges, making the slug like creatures themselves deadly to predators.

This image of a pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273 was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and released in April 2011.

This harlequin shrimp isnt clowning around (yeah, yeah, cue groans).Hymenocera eleganshere is found in the waters off of Indonesia. Popular among aquariumenthusiasts for their bright colors, harlequin shrimp are nonetheless tough to care for in a tank. One reason is their diet: They eat only starfish (and sometimes sea urchins), and they reportedly prefer to eat them alive. Since the prey is so much larger than the predator, it sometimes takes the shrimp two weeks to finish off a single (living) starfish. No wonder people think clowns are scary.

Streams of cold gas feed a forming galaxy in this artists visualization. The arms of gas bring in the raw material to feed star formation in the new galaxy. No one has ever seen this process in real life; rather, this version of galaxy formation is a theoretical scenario based on numerical simulations.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill left a sheen of petroleum on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Now, a new study finds that oil eating microbes chowed down on this unlikely feast but the type of microbes depended strongly on water temperature. Cold loving, or psychrophilic, bacteria thrived in the deep oil plume rising from the ocean floor, feeding preferentially on natural gas, researchers reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Oct. 3, 2011.

The Oct. 11 full moon shines over Greenlands ice sheet in this photograph taken from Summit Station. Ice crystals in the air reflect the moons light,creating a halo effect. But it wasnt a night to stay out sky watching long: Temperatures were 22 degrees Fahrenheit ( 30 degrees Celsius) when photographer Ed Stockard snapped this image.