"Best Photos Of The Past Year"
2003
A rainbow trout fingerling peers out from the gullet of a northern pike at the Alaska Department of Fish & Game aquarium in Anchorage.
A Romp in Russia
A polar bear cub
plays near his mother at the Moscow Zoo.

Moonshot
Flying at nearly
35,000 feet, a jet passes over the disk of a winter half moon above Boston on
January 3, 2003. The jet leaves contrails in its wake due to the temperature
difference between the hot engine exhaust and the cold air.

Red Square Reflection
The Kremlin's Spassky
Tower and passers-by are reflected in the wet cobblestones of Moscow's Red
Square on February 13, 2003.

A Galaxy's Sharp Edge
An image produced by
the Hubble Space Telescope, released March 1, 2003, 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.

Light of the World
This composite image
shows what Earth looks like at night. City lights highlight developed areas of
the planet.

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, 2003, after fleeing the
fighting in Macedonia two days earlier.
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.

Great White Whale
A beluga whale swims
in a tank at the Vancouver Aquarium.

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, 2003, bringing thunder and flashes of lightning.

The Little
Duckling Who Could
Mallard ducklings wait their turn May 14, 2003 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.

A Palestinian youth uses a slingshot to fire stones at Israeli soldiers from behind a barricade of burning tires May 23, 2003.
Rainbow Times Two
An afternoon storm
brought a double rainbow over downtown Chillicothe, Ohio, on May 27, 2003.
Lightning ripples over the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, Texas, on June 14, 2003.

Grand Old Night
Tanner Mann, 8, of Hortonville, Wis., gets a good seat on top of his mother's car July 4, 2003 for the fireworks show at Riverside Park in New London.

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, 2003.

Stellar Light Show
From ground-based telescopes, the "ant nebula" resembles the head and thorax of a garden ant.