Incredible images showcase scientists at work
A biologist tracking whales in the Norwegian fjords, a vast telescope pictured below breathtaking skies and a scientist holding tiny froglets all feature in the top images from this year's Nature Scientist at Work competition.
Six winners were selected from the more than 200 entries submitted to the competition, which showcases the diverse, fascinating and challenging work that scientists carry out all over the world. Now in its sixth year, the contest is judged by a jury made up of staff from the journal Nature, which runs the competition.
The overall winning image was taken by Emma Vogel, a PhD student at the University of Tromsø. It features biologist Audun Rikardsen scanning the water around fishing trawlers in northern Norway for whales while holding an airgun, which he uses to deploy tags that track the marine animals.
'You could smell their breath,' Vogel said of the whales in a competition press release Tuesday. 'And you could hear them before you can see them, which is always quite incredible.'
The winning images show scientists in cold and warmer climates. One features researchers boring an ice core in the archipelago of Svalbard, while another shows a biologist holding tiny froglets in California's Lassen National Forest.
A scientist is pictured next to a weather balloon in the fog on Mount Helmos in Greece in a separate image, while another shows the vast South Pole Telescope at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole station lit by an aurora overhead.
The final winning picture shows the silhouette of a man entering a cabin against the dark backdrop of a starlit sky in eastern Siberia. His colleague, photographer Jiayi Wang, said that, while the remote location where they worked can be beautiful, long periods of time spent there can also be tedious. 'There's no network there. And the only thing you can do is watch the rocks,' he said in the press release.
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