The month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team. By Fred Schwaller 03 March 2026 Coral life. This inside-out view of a cauliflower soft coral (Eunephthya thyrsoidea) in the Lembeh Strait in Indonesia, reveals its forest-like inner architecture, formed by tiny, rounded polyps that create the coral’s puffy texture. It won photographer Ross Gudgeon the grand Close-up Photographer of the Year contest. To get this unusual illustration-like shot, Gudgeon carefully threaded a special underwater probe lens between the coral’s branches. The red lines in the image show the coral’s sclerites — thin spiny pieces of calcium carbonate that support the animal’s soft body. The coral’s polyps have feathery tentacles that comb through water to trap plankton to feed on. Ross Gudgeon/CUPOTY Cosmic anomalies. Researchers at the European Space Agency’s European Space Astronomy Centre in Madrid identified six previously unknown astrophysical objects.…