The photos below were voted by readers as the best images of the past year...
Swallowed whole : A rainbow trout fingerling peers out from the gullet of a northern pike at the Alaska Department of Fish & Game aquarium in Anchorage.
Moonshot : 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.
A galaxy's sharp edge : 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.
Mother and child : 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.
A useful lesson : 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.
The little duckling who could : 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.
Grand old night : Tanner Mann, 8, of Hortonville, Wis., gets a good seat on top of his mother's car July 4 for the fireworks show at Riverside Park in New London.
Fwd Mail : pics of the year
