Britain was set for a warm weekend on Friday as a huge sun rose over the lighthouse in South Shields at the mouth of the Tyne estuary.
The sun was also shining for art lovers, looking forward to snapping up works by Banksy at the Urban Art Sale, which takes place at Bonhams on 29 March, 2012.
At Kensington Palace a contemporary art exhibit in the State Apartments was unveiled during a press preview.
Animals were full of the sense of spring too, as Isabella the meerkate was pictured with her son Marvin, born at Blair Drummond Safari Park over the winter.
Also at the park, joey kangaroo Levi sat in his mothers Olivia's pouch.
Photographers captured a less tranquil scene in Israel as a Palestinian demonstrator returned a tear gas canister towards soldiers during a protest against the expansion of a Jewish settlement.
On a larger scale, however, the Nasa/ESA Hubble Space Telescope produced the most detailed image so far of Messier 9, a globular star cluster located close to the center of the galaxy.
This ball of stars is too faint to see with the naked eye, yet Hubble can see over 250,000 individual stars shining within it.