Take a tour through the images that defined 2009, from the murkiest depths of the oceans, where warring worms pepper their enemies with glowing bombs, to the spectacular swirling rainbows thousands of light years away at the heart of the Milky Way. This year has provided a pictorial panoply, with dust-filled volcanic eruptions captured on film by luck, the tiniest of toads at risk of being lost forever and humankind's outpost in space picked out in detail as it passes in front of the Sun.