Uluru at Sunset, Australia

Uluru rises 348 m (1,142 ft) above the surrounding plain in the southern Northern Territory, about 335 km (208 mi) south-west of Alice Springs, with a base perimeter of 9.4 km (5.8 mi). It is a single block of arkose sandstone rather than a collection of boulders, and most of its bulk is thought to extend well below the ground it stands on. The reddish colour that makes it so recognisable comes from iron oxide — rust, essentially — coating the sandstone's surface, and that colour shifts through the day, most dramatically at dawn and dusk when low-angle sunlight sets the whole rock glowing, as captured in this photograph.

The surveyor William Gosse named it Ayers Rock in 1873, after the then Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers. In 1993 it was officially given a dual name, "Ayers Rock / Uluru," and in 2002 the order was reversed to "Uluru / Ayers Rock" at local request — Uluru being the name used by the Aṉangu, the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara traditional owners, for whom the rock holds deep spiritual significance. The Australian government handed ownership of Uluru back to the Aṉangu on 26 October 1985, with the land immediately leased back for joint management as part of Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A chain bolted to the rock in 1964 let tourists climb to the top for decades, against the wishes of the Aṉangu, who regard the climbing route as crossing a sacred path. The national park board voted unanimously to end the climb in 2017, and the ban took effect on 26 October 2019 — exactly 34 years after the handback — when the chain was removed for good. As a jigsaw, the scene divides cleanly: the pale dusk sky with its scattered clouds forms an easy opening section, the rock's deeply fluted red face is the detailed centrepiece, and the grassy spinifex plain in the foreground makes a textured, forgiving finish.