Best photos of the year...awesome!

[Cory]

A rainbow trout fingerling peers out from the gullet of a northern pike at the Alaska Department of Fish & Game aquarium in Anchorage.

[Cory]

A polar bear cub plays near his mother at the Moscow Zoo.

[Cory]

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

[Cory]

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

[Cory]

An image produced by the Hubble Space Telescope, released March 1, 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.

[Cory]

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

[Cory]

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, after fleeing the fighting in Macedonia two days earlier.

[Cory]

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.

[Cory]

A beluga whale swims in a tank at the Vancouver Aquarium

[Bouncer]

Originally posted by Cory
This composite image shows what Earth looks like at night. City lights highlight developed areas of the planet.

damn, look how packed the whole eastern part of the US is.

[Cory]

Crystal, a year-old black Labrador-Dalmatian mix, peers through a heart-shaped hole in a fence

[Cory]

Dark clouds roll over Blair, Neb., on May 9, bringing thunder and flashes of lightning.

[Cory]

Mallard ducklings wait their turn May 14 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.

[Cory]

A Palestinian youth uses a slingshot to fire stones at Israeli soldiers from behind a barricade of burning tires May 23.

[Cory]

An afternoon storm brought a double rainbow over downtown Chillicothe, Ohio, on May 27.