Giant sea dragon and snow-covered Sahara — January’s best science images

Tonga eruption. On 15 January, a submarine volcano called Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai erupted in Tonga, triggering atmospheric shock waves that travelled several thousand kilometres. These images from orbit show a spectacular plume of ash rising from the ocean. The eruption was a one-in-a-thousand-year event for the volcano, according to Shane Croninc, a volcanologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Satellite data show that the event also provoked an unusual pattern of atmospheric gravity waves. And NASA scientists say that the explosion is helping them to understand how certain features formed on the surfaces of Mars and Venus.

Snow caps the sand dunes of the Sahara Desert in January 2022.

Credit: Karim Bouchetata/Bav Media

Snowy Sahara. Mid-January saw snowfall in the Sahara Desert in northwestern Algeria as overnight temperatures plummeted to below freezing, leaving these sand dunes near the town of Aïn Séfra partially covered in snow and ice. Snow is rare but not unheard of in the region: it also fell in 2021, 2018, 2017 and 1979. During the summer months, average daily temperatures can be as high as 37 °C.

Sweet sensors. Researchers have identified specialized gut cells that can tell the difference between natural sugar and artificial sweeteners. The sensory cells — shown in green in this microscopy image of the lining of a mouse small intestine — are similar to taste buds in the tongue or retinal cone cells in the eye, and can transmit signals to the brain in milliseconds. “They sense traces of sugar versus sweetener and then they release different neurotransmitters that go into different cells in the vagus nerve, and ultimately, the animal knows ‘this is sugar’ or ‘this is sweetener’,” says Diego Bohórquez, a neurobiologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The finding helps to explain the previous observation that mice whose sweet-sensing taste buds have been disabled still seem to prefer sugar to artificial sweeteners.

Credit: Borhóquez Lab/Duke University

A section of mouse intestines shows in green the relatively scarce neuropod cells in the epithelium.

Greta Thunberg´s Rainfrog named Pristimantis gretathunbergae.

Credit: Konrad Mebert

Greta’s frog. This newly described species of frog has been named after teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg. Researchers found Pristimantis gretathunbergae on Mount Chucantí, which is part of an isolated mountain range in eastern Panama surrounded by tropical rainforest. Its black eyes are unique among Central American rain frogs, and its closest relatives are found in northwestern Colombia. The non-profit organization Rainforest Trust ran a charity auction to name the species — the winner said that they wanted to honour Thunberg for her work highlighting the urgency of preventing climate change.

ESO; Th. Stanke; J. Emerson/VISTA. Acknowledgement: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit; Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin. This video has no sound.

Orion’s fireplace. Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory put together this spectacular shot showing part of the Orion cloud — a massive star-forming area in the constellation of Orion, around 475 parsecs away — using images taken at various wavelengths by several telescopes. The large, fiery-looking structure on the left is the Flame Nebula, a ball of dust and ionized gas with a cluster of newly formed stars at its centre. To the right of that is a smaller nebula called NGC 2023. The Horse Head Nebula — named for its shape — is visible near the top-right corner of the image. The observations were part of a survey that looked at the radiation emitted by carbon monoxide in the Orion cloud, to map various different structures.

Dr Dean Lomax pictured with the fossilised remains of Britain's largest ichthyosaur.

Credit: Matt Power/Anglian Water/Bav Media/Shutterstock

Here be dragons. The fossilized remains of this 10-metre-long ichthyosaur (commonly known as a sea dragon) were uncovered during routine drainage work at a reservoir in Leicestershire, UK. The fossil of this sea predator is around 180 million years old and is the largest of its kind to be found in the country. Dean Lomax (shown here demonstrating the size of the fossil), a palaeontologist at the University of Manchester who led the excavation effort, said that the discovery was “one of the greatest finds in British palaeontological history”.

In vitro albinism. This collection of stem cells comes from a person with albinism — a condition that affects pigmentation in the eyes, skin and hair. The colours represent the dyes that label various proteins and structures in the cells (blue indicates the cell nuclei, for example). Researchers used cells such as these to develop an in vitro model for albinism by differentiating them into cells of the retinal pigment epithelium. This tissue normally aids vision by preventing the scattering of light, but it lacks pigment in people with albinism. “This ‘disease-in-a-dish’ system will help us understand how the absence of pigment in albinism leads to abnormal development of the retina, optic nerve fibres and other eye structures,” says Aman George, a staff scientist at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. “A human stem-cell model that mimics the disease is an important step forward in understanding albinism and testing potential therapies to treat it.”

Credit: National Eye Institute

A human induced pluripotent stem cell colony from OCA1A patient.

A researcher adjusts an electronic vehicle holding a tank of water with a goldfish

Credit: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters/Alamy

Fish out of water. There are two fish in a tank. One says to the other: “How do you drive this thing?” It’s a groan-inducing dad joke. But it’s now closer to reality than most of us could ever imagine. Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel, have created a robotic vehicle that can be driven by goldfish. The wheeled tank moves in response to the movements and orientation of its aquatic drivers, allowing them unprecedented freedom to explore on land. Its creators hope that the research will provide new insights into how animals navigate.

A Bornean orangutan named Sandai receives an experimental dose of a vaccine against COVID-19.

Credit: Javier Torres/AFP/Getty

Experimental vaccine. This Bornean orangutan — called Sandai — was one of ten animals at the Buin Zoo in Chile to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in an experimental programme for animals thought to be at risk of catching SARS-CoV-2. The virus can infect various wild and domestic animals such as cats, dogs, ferrets, mink, pigs, deer and hamsters. Nine big cats at the zoo — including lions, tigers and pumas — have also been vaccinated.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00151-1