In pictures: Nature's 2025 Scientist At Work competition winners deliver breathtaking imagery
The Scientist At Work competition is now in its sixth year and invites Nature readers to capture the colourful work that scientists do around the world.
Six winners were revealed and one was deemed the overall winner.
The winners were selected by a jury of Nature staff.
Taking first place as the overall winner was a photograph of biologist Audun Rikardsen, taken by his PhD student Emma Vogel from the University of Tromsø.
The image shows Rikardsen scanning the waters for whales near fishing trawlers in the fjords of northern Norway.
"You could smell their breath," Vogel said.
"And you could hear them before you can see them, which is always quite incredible."
What he's holding is an airgun - used to deploy satellite tags to track the movement of whales.
Tiny froglets hop their way into a winning image taken by Ryan Wagner, from Washington State University Vancouver, who also had a winning entry last year, a first for the competition.
Seen holding the small creatures in California's Lasssen National Forest is Kate Belleville from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Another winner shows a weather balloon amidst - or "a-mist" - the dense fog on Mount Helmos in Greece.
The image was captured by Lionel Favre from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and depicts his colleague Michael Lonardi.
This stunning winner was taken during Aman Chokshi's stay at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole station.
It captures the beautiful hue of the South Pole aurora backlighting the South Pole Telescope.
This desolate photo is of geobiologist James Bradley and microbiologist Catherine Larose in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
Captured by Dagmara Wojtanowicz, it shows the scientists holding a "boring" ice core.
The final winning photo captures a silhouette of Hao-Cheng Yu entering a cabin backlit by the starry backdrop.
His colleague Jiayi Wang took the shot, and explained the tedious nature of their work.
"There's no network there. And the only thing you can do is watch the rocks."
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