No matter how cool and advanced may be the visual effects in movies nowadays, Mother Nature leaves far behind even the most eminent filmmakers. With its incredible power and indescribable beauty, our planet's nature creates a great amount of fantastic performances. Here are some of the stunning phenomena in our photo gallery.
At night, the coastal waters of the Vaadhoo Island, Maldives, are covered with thousands of blue lights. The light source is a phytoplankton. The blue illumination appears due to electrical impulse resulting from the oscillatory motion of waves.
The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, recognized as a World Heritage Site, contains most of the over-wintering sites of the eastern population of the monarch butterfly. The 56,259-hectar reserve, which is home to a billion of butterflies from November to March, is located on the border of two Mexican states: Michoacán and State of Mexico. As a result of one of the most specific migrations in the animal world, the forest in the reserve is completely covered with a colorful "carpet."
A surfer looks at the northern lights (aurora borealis) on the snow-covered beach of Unstad on Lofoten Island, Arctic Circle, March 9, 2016. The aurora borealis happens when charged particles from explosions on the Sun interact with the upper layers of the atmosphere. The best place to witness this phenomenon is in the so-called Northern Lights “zone,” which extends from Lofoten to the North Cape.
4/10
© AP Photo / Shizuo Kambayashi
People row their boats under cherry blossoms at Imperial Palace moat in Tokyo, April 4, 2016. Japanese compare blossoming sakura with the beauty and transience of life. For 7-10 days, hundreds of trees are covered with white or pink flowers, resembling floating clouds from a distance.
Mount Yasur is a volcano on Tanna Island, Vanuatu, that has been demonstrating its strength and power every day since the 18th century. It is the only volcano in the world to be in a constant state of eruption, throwing out glowing streams of lava and ash.
One of the main attractions of the Netherlands is its tulip fields. The most popular place for admiring the blossoming tulips is Keukenhof, also known as the Garden of Europe. The park boasts 4.5 million tulips of 100 different species, which can be seen in all their glory from mid-March to mid-May.
In this photo made on June 1, 2011, tourists watch the “Old Faithful” geyser which erupts on average every 90 minutes in the Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, US. Yellowstone National Park is famous not only for its beautiful landscapes and nature, it is also home to about 3 thousand geysers, which is 2/3 of all the geysers in the world.
The Perseid meteor shower is one of the most impressive and romantic night-time sights. The dust particles, which emanate from the Comet Swift-Tuttle, burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, dropping in a form of a stellar rain. In August, the number of meteors reaches its peak: up to 60 meteors per hour can be seen in the sky with the naked eye.
Victoria Falls is one of the most amazing waterfalls in the world, stretching more than 100 meters high and over a 1 kilometer wide. Every minute it dispatches 550 million liters of water, forming a huge cloud of spray, for which the locals called him "thundering smoke."
Due to strong currents rich in plankton, a multitude of fish from over 3,000 species can be seen in the waters near the Sipadan Island. Several times a day huge schools of fish create little tornados in this "natural aquarium."
