Seals, sunsets and giant snakes – The best scientific images from May

Clouds of space. Two large clouds of gas and dust dominate this striking image captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Young stars form in the nebulae, before they enlarge and produce strong winds that carry the clouds – like what is going on around the bright cluster of stars upstairs at right of the biggest nebula. Spitzer's infrared cameras broke this picture in 2009, before the observatory ran out of helium coolant, but the photo was made public for the first time in May.

Border bear. This rare Asian black bear, filmed by a camera, crossed an unusual wildlife reserve: the demilitarized zone (DMZ) located between North Korea and South Korea. The 4 km wide and 250 km long land strip that divides the Korean Peninsula has become a de facto natural reserve, home to hundreds of species of plants and animals that flourish. in the absence of the man. The bear was broken by one of the 92 cameras installed in the demilitarized zone by the National Institute of Ecology of South Korea in 2014.

Special delivery. It might seem like coming out of the new Godzilla movie – but 60 million years ago, this 13 meter long snake was really living on our planet. The Chester Zoo in the United Kingdom presents animatronic models of Titanoboa cerrejonensis and a dozen other predators massively extinct as part of the "Predators" exhibition open in May. The zoo wishes to use the exhibition to highlight the extinction threat of modern animals.

Martian sunset. As the sun set on Mars, NASA's InSight robot captured this image of drifting clouds in the sky. The images were taken by InSight's instrument context camera, which offers a panoramic view of the "workspace" on which the lander deploys his instruments. These include the domed seismometer seen here, which detected in March an earthquake.

Seal splashes. A spotted seal is returned to sea off Dalian, in China's northeastern Liaoning Province. In February, the authorities discovered that 100 of the protected animals had been abducted by poachers. This lucky seal was one of 61 survivors who were treated before being released into their natural habitat.

Tornado outbreak. Devastating storms swept large parts of the United States during the last two weeks of May. The Midwest has been particularly hard hit, experiencing an unusually high number of tornadoes, like the one pictured here, near Magnum, Oklahoma.

Vacuum test. NASA's Mars 2020 spacecraft is being prepared before being tested in a vacuum chamber at the company's reaction propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, which simulates the conditions of interplanetary space. The spacecraft will take off around the middle of 2020 and transport the next NASA rover to the planet seven months later.

Old footprints. These fingerprints left by a moa, an extinct giant bird from New Zealand, are the first to be found on the southern island of the country. A resident of the area noticed the marks under the water during a swim in the Ryeburn River. He alerted the staff of the Otago Museum, who orally diverted the river and searched the fossilized footprints, which could be several million years old.

Love at first sight. Russian rocket Soyuz-2 was hit by lightning shortly after its launch on May 27. Despite the strike, the machine was able to deploy its payload, a satellite that is part of the country's GLONASS navigation system.