TOPSHOT - People dine around a table suspended by a crane at 50 meters above the ground, at the Dinner in the Sky restaurant, in the Gulf emirate, on March 11, 2021. (Photo by GIUSEPPE CACACE / AFP) (Photo by GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images)
Spring is here, the weather in the UK is warming up and Easter is nearly upon us.We've selected some of our favourite images in science this month to share with you, from rare snow in Chile to a creepy cyborg mask, a boat blocking one of the most important shipping channels in the world and sand dunes on Mars.
A Rare Blanket Of Snow
The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) at the Chajnantor plateau in northern Chile covered in a rare blanket of snow on 1 March 2021. Snow is a very unusual occurrence in this part of Chile, where normally the staff at the facility have water shipped to the site in tanks. A number of ALMA’s 66 high-precision radio antennas can be seen in this image, connected by cleared pathways. The array spends its time observing the cool Universe and its phenomena, such as star formations, molecular clouds and the early Universe. - ESO
Testing A Planet-hunter
A test replica of ESA's planet-hunting PLATO spacecraft, pictured on5 March 2021, spent 17 days inside a thermal vacuum chamber.Testing at the ESTEC Test Centrein the Netherlands reproduced the telescope’s planned operating environment in deep space, 1.5 million km away from Earth. - ESA/Matteo Apolloni
Bridge Of Good Fortune
Tourists walk on the cloud-shrouded Ruyi Bridge at Shenxianju Scenic Area on 9 March 2021 in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province of China. Spanning 100 meters across the Shenxianju valley, the bridgeis more than 140 meters high and is shaped like a jade Ruyi, an ornamental sceptre traditionally symbolising power and good fortune in China. Wu Linwu/VCG - Getty Images
Making Faces
An outer shell for a Robo-C robot at the Promobot humanoid robot modelling centre is pictured on 10 March 2021. Promobot has launched a center for the production and development of human-like robots, as well as a lab creating realistic artificial skin, in the Far Eastern city of Vladivostok. Founded in 2015 in the city of Perm, Promobot is the largest manufacturer of autonomous service robots in Europe. 40 countries use Promobots robots as administrators, promoters, consultants, guides and doorkeepers to replace or complement human employees. The main objective of the Vladivostok branch of the company is to make human-like robots not only realistic, but also attractive. Yuri Smityuk/TASS - Getty Images
Al Fresco Dining
People dine around a table suspended by a crane at 50 meters above the ground, at the Dinner in the Sky restaurant, in the Gulf emirate, on 11 March 2021. Giuseppe Cacace/AFP - Getty Images
Underwater Neutrino Detectors
Preparing for a ceremony to launch the Baikal Gigaton Volume Detector (Baikal-GVD) deep underwater neutrino telescope built on Lake Baikal, 13 March 2021. The project is aimed at studying the flux of high-energy cosmic neutrinos and searching for their sources. The telescope is installed 3.5 km offshore in Lake Baikal, Russia, at the depth of 750-1,300 m. Alexei Kushnirenko/TASS - Getty Images
Light Show
Staff members walk inside an interactive installation "Ephemeral Solidified Light" during a media preview of the "teamLab Reconnect: Art with Rinkan Sauna" art and sauna experience organised by teamLab and TikTok, in the Roppongi district of Tokyo on 15 March 2021. Philip Fong/AFP - Getty Images
Going Up!
A pilot takes a flight on a flying taxi prototype during testing in Moscow on 16 March 2021. Russian developer of passenger drones Hoversurf company tests its Hover drone taxi, a flying vehicle that can fly 30 minutes on one charge at an altitude of 150 meters transporting passengers and cargo up to 300 kg for a distance of up to 100 kilometres at speed of 200 kilometres per hour. The company aims to have these drones operating by 2025. Alexander Nemenov/AFP - Getty Images
Laughing In The Face Of Danger
A picture taken on 16 March 2021 shows people watching Klyuchevskoy volcano eruption on Russia's far eastern Kamchatka peninsula. The eruption of a volcano on a Russian peninsula has attracted thrill-seeking tourists risking their lives for picturesque photos, prompting concerns in recent days from local emergency responders. Maxim Fesyunov/AFP - Getty Images
Keeping A Safe Distance
Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk, left, and Rick Gilbrech, director of NASA's Stennis Space Center, right, watch as the core stage for the first flight of NASA's Space Launch System rocket undergoes a second hot fire test in the B-2 Test Stand, Thursday, 18 March 2021, at NASAs Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The four RS-25 engines fired for the full duration of 8 minutes during the test and generated 7 million newtons of thrust. The hot fire test is the final stage of the Green Run test series, a comprehensive assessment of the Space Launch Systems core stage prior to launching the Artemis I mission to the Moon. Robert Markowitz/NASA - Getty Images
Lava Tourists
Sunday hikers look at the lava flowing from the erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano some 40 km west of the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, on 21 March 2021. Weekend hikers took the opportunity Sunday to inspect the area where a volcano erupted in Iceland on 19 March, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the capital Reykjavik, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said, as a red cloud lit up the night sky and a no-fly zone was established in the area. Jeremie Richard/AFP - Getty Images
Flooding In Australia
People look out at a flooded residential area in the Windsor area in northwestern Sydney on 23 March 2021, after torrential downpours have lashed Australia's southeast for days. Saeed Khan/AFP - Getty Images
Upgrading Alice
Installation of the Outer Barrel of the new silicon Inner Tracking System of the ALICE experiment at CERN, 23 March 2021 - Felix Reidt/Cern
Blink And You'll Miss It
A Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with a Fregat upper stage block and 36 OneWeb satellites blasts off from a launch pad of Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Amur Region of Russia, 25 March 2021. Yuri Smityuk/TASS - Getty Images
Sand Castles On Mars
A field of sand dunes occupies this frosty 5-kilometer diameter crater in the high-latitudes of the northern plains of Mars. Some dunes have separated from the main field and appear to be climbing up the crater slope along a gully-like form.The surface of the main dune field is characterised by a series of dark-toned polygonal patterns, as seen in this image released by NASA on the 25 March 2021. These may be the result of seasonal frost processes. Several of the steeper dune slopes, pointing in the downwind direction, host narrow furrows suggesting the start of gully formation. - NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
This Is A Hold-up
An aerial view taken on 27 March 2021 from the porthole of a commercial plane shows stranded ships waiting in queue in the Gulf of Suez to cross the Suez Canal at its southern entrance near the Red Sea port city of Suez. The Panama-flagged container ship "MV Ever Given" was wedged sideways about six kilometres north of the canal's entrance, impeding all flowing traffic from 23 March, until finally being freed on the 29th March. Mahmoud Khaled/AFP - Getty Images
Mission To A Metal Asteroid
The Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) Chassis of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is mounted onto a rotation fixture in High Bay 1 of the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. This photo was taken 28 March 2021, just after the chassis – a major component of the Psyche spacecraft – was delivered to JPL by Maxar Technologies. The Psyche mission will launch in 2022, and will study a metal asteroid that is orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. - NASA/JPL
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James Cutmore is the picture editor of BBC Science Focus Magazine. He has worked on the magazine and website for over a decade, telling compelling science stories through the use of striking imagery. He holds a degree in Fine Art, and has been nominated for the British Society of Magazine Editors Talent Awards, being highly commended in 2020. His main areas of interest include photography that highlights positive technology and the natural world. For many years he was a judge for the Wellcome Trust's image competition, as well as judging for the Royal Photographic Society.
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