Pilot Ron Candiloro breaks through the sound barrier in an F/A-18 Homet fighter plane over the Pacific Ocean.
The cloud ball effect is caused when forward sound waves squeeze moisture in the air.

 

Black sun – the last solar eclipse of the millennium is seen in this multiple exposure
 photograph as it appeared from the famous Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey.

 

A room with a view – French jets fly over Dubai’s Burj Al-Arab,
 the world’s tallest sea-based hotel, during preparations for the Dubai Air Show.

 

A NASA Hubble space telescope photo reveals the spiral galaxy NGC 4603,
 the most distant galaxy in which a special class of pulsating stars called Cepheid variables have been found.



Falling for colour – hundreds of cars jam a road in Nikko, Japan,
 as drivers slow down to admire the colourfully tinted leaves of autumn.


 

Singers perform on a giant stage on Lake Constance during a rehearsal of Giuseppe Verdi’s
opera ‘Ein Maskenball’.  The design of the stage in the lake shows ‘Death’ reading the book.