Tiny blennies such as this spinyhead poke out from the coral in Cuba's Cayo Largo, always on the lookout for edible items within darting reach. "They are no bigger than an infant's finger, but they are tigers—extremely aggressive and territorial," says photographer David Doubilet. "They seem to have no concept of their own size."

Incense smoke clouds the air as sun streams through strings of prayer flags during New Year celebrations in Lhasa, Tibet. The fragrant smoke of juniper and artemisia is thought to be pleasing to the spirits of land and sky

Tucked within the Karakoram Range of the Himalaya near the Pakistan-China border, the spires of the Trango Group protrude from the icy landscape like shark's teeth. Within this group stands Trango Tower, a sheer, nearly 3,000-foot (915-meter) dagger of granite. In 1996, a group of intrepid mountaineers became the first to successfully free-climb the tower's East Face. Here, expedition member Todd Skinner works to set up a hanging camp anchored to the tower some 19,500 feet (5,950 meters) above sea level

Prayer flags adorn the rooftops of houses in Gyangze, Tibet, during Losar, the Tibetan New Year. The flags are printed with the images of deities, prayer texts, or symbols of good fortune and placed where the wind will move through them and carry their blessings across the land

November 13, 2008—Saturn has given scientists a light show like nothing they've ever seen, NASA announced Wednesday.
The Cassini orbiter has captured a unique aurora (shown in blue) on the ringed planet that illuminates much of its northern polar cap.
Auroras occur when charged particles stream across a planet's magnetic field lines and into its atmosphere.
But they don't usually light up such a wide area.
"It's not just a ring of auroras like those we've seen at Jupiter or Earth," Tom Stallard, a scientist at the University of Leichester, U.K., said in a statement. He added that "finding such a bright aurora here is a fantastic surprise."
(Related: "Mysterious Cyclones Seen at Both of Saturn's Poles" [October 14, 2008].)
The newfound aurora is often elusive, sometimes disappearing within 45 minutes, the researchers say.
Explaining the oddity will undoubtedly unearth new laws of physics found only on Saturn, said Nick Achilleos of University College London.
—Christine Dell'Amore

Equipped with echolocation and gaffing claws, the greater bulldog bat of Panama's Barro Colorado Island can detect the hair-thin fin of a fish breaking the water's surface, a useful skill in a forest full of bat competitors.

The Pacific smolders as lava from Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano hits the ocean. Kilauea is a shield volcano, or a low, gently sloping volcano built almost entirely from basaltic lava flows. It is one of five such volcanoes that make up Hawaii's Big Island