Flowers Bloom in the Atacama Desert – in Pictures

The Atacama desert, covering a 600-mile (1,000 km) strip of land on the Pacific coast west of the Andes mountains, is experiencing a rare springtime bloom of flowers after El Niño brought the heaviest rainfall in two decades earlier this year. The desert is usually one of the driest places on Earth.

Great Exuma Island, Bahamas

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of small island cays in the Bahamas and the prominent tidal channels cutting between them. For astronauts, this is one of the most recognizable points on the planet.