Troublemaker. Winner of Animal Portraits, by Stefano Unterthiner.
The show. Winner of 15-17 category, by Catriona Parfitt.
Window on the ice melt. Runner up in the One Earth Award, by Ira Meyer.
Cypress Swamp. Winner of In praise of plants, by Cece Fabbro.
Polar Sunrise. Winner of Creative visions of Nature, by Miguel Lasa .
Shark nursery. Runner up in animals in their environments, by Brian Skerry.
I'll resist posting all the photos, but if you're in London, definitely go check out the exhibit (but try and do it on a weekday unless you like crowds). Otherwise, you'll have to wait for the collection to start touring or you'll have to check it out online.
The Boston Sun had some sizzling photos of the Sun in all it's yellow glory recent.
A six day animation of the sun, taken by NASA's Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) and filmed in June 2005.
"A sweeping prominence, a huge cloud of relatively cool dense plasma is seen suspended in the Sun's hot, thin corona. Emission in this spectral line shows the upper chromosphere at a temperature of about 60,000 degrees K (over 100,000 degrees F). The hottest areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler temperatures."
A closeup of magnetic structures on the Sun's surface.
A total solar eclipse, February 16, 1980, in Palem, India
A sunspot and granules on the Sun's surface.
An erupting solar filament. "Filaments are concentrated bundles of magnetic field filled with relatively cool gas, suspended in the solar corona. When they become unstable, they can erupt, triggering coronal mass ejections and solar flares. The dark material here is relatively cool, while the bright material is hotter than a million degrees. As this hot material cools, it condenses and drains down the lines of magnetic field in the corona much like beads moving along a wire, a process some scientists refer to as "coronal rain"."
A visually stunning prominence eruption, seen in extreme UV light. "It rose up and cascaded to the right over several hours, appearing something like a flag unfurling, as it broke apart and headed into space. The material observed is ionized Helium at about 60,000 degrees."
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, now in its 44th year, is opening on Oct 31st at the Natural History Museum in London. To get all us nature lovers excited, they have released a sneak peak of some highly commended images:
Angry Queen, by Piotr Naskrecki, shows a Cambodian armoured ant ready to strike. Stand back, unless you enjoy being sprayed by acid.
Treetop Jigsaw, by Brittany Fried. Not only is this photo of the Malasian rainforest really cool, it is in the 10 years and under category.
Spider Crabs in the canary islands, by Jordi Chias Pujol.
A lonely Baobab blowing in the wind. Photographer unknown.
Sterling genie. A swirl of starlings, captured by Baris Koca over Lake Morgan in Turkey.
A hoopoe, sporting a Mohican crest, caught on film by Ramon Navarro Blazquez near Seville.
A hunting vixen, by Patrick Centurioni.
Safieí Al Khaffaf spotted this Griffon vulture on the Russian side of the Caucus mountains. Entered into the 15-17 category.
Namibian bee-eater, by Chris van Rooyen
Some 6,000 sandpipers on a sand bar in Cordova, Alaska. Taken by Arthur Morris.
To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by 2007s offerings, but so far I like what I see! Looking forward to the winners being announced on the 29th of Oct, two days before the exhibit opens.
The winners of the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge have been announced, and are definitely worth checking out:
Glass forest. Taken by Mario De Stefano with a scanning electron microscope, this image took the first place in the Photography section. It shows diatoms, tiny algae, attached to a marine hydroid, another tiny plant-like creature. According to Stefano:
“This is the study of a community, … the same community as you would find in a rainforest.”
Squid suckers. Honourable mention in the Photography section, Jessica D. Schiffman and Caroline show the 400 micrometer diameter suckers that Loligo pealei squid use to latch on to prey. False colour scheme inspired by Little Shop of Horrors.
Visualizing the bible. Honourable mention in the Illustration section, Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild show that science and religion needn't always disagree. Bar along the bottom represent the different chapters from the bible, and the length of the bars represent the number of verses in the chapter. The arcs represent the 63,779 cross references in the bible, with different colours representing the distances between connected chapters.
Mad hatter's tea, from Alice's adventures in a microscopic wonderland. Colleen Champ and Dennis Kunkel won first place in Informational Graphics for this whimsical science drawing. The Mad Hatter, March Hare and sleepy Dormouse (beetles) sit at a table (of butterfly wings), surrounded by a field (of crystallized vitamin C), under a flock of flying geese (a.k.a. aphids), atop a colourful explosion (of mold spores).
I like this one too, but have no idea what it is. Something to do with a worm, perhaps?
There's lots of other cool entries, including some science websites, such as Exploring Life's Origins, that are worth a gander too.
The full details seem to be at the NSF website, with links to past winners too, and Science also has a spread on the competition.
Fruit, a new book by Rob Kesseler and Wolfgang Stuppy, provides an amazingly up close examination of the colourful fruits and seeds that make our world so tasty. Kesseler and Stuppy use electron microscopy to showcase seeds, sometimes providing insight into the ingenious ways in which fruits make sure their seeds get spread. The photos are beautiful.
Scarlet pimpernel. When an animal brushes past the scarlet pimpernell, it knocks the outer casing open so that the seeds can escape. Seeds that fall onto the animal catch a free ride to distant fields.
Creeping carrot. This seed has wings, which allow it to fly in the wind, and spikes, which allow it to attach to passing animals. In either case, it can go far.
Strawberries. Mmmmmmmmm.
Peach skin. The short and long hairs make up the peach fuzz. The interspersed spots are fruits the breathing pores.
Poppy. When the wind blows the poppy, its tiny little seeds are thrown out of the open holes at the top of the capsule, like salt from salt shaker.
Three corner jack (Emex australis). Now matter how this seed falls, it always has a sharp spike that will stick up into the air, so that it can lodge itself into the foot of a passing animal and hitch a ride.
A fig. You will never see flowers on fig trees - oddly, the fig flowers are closely packed together inside the fruit, as is shown above.
Japanese wineberry.
Mulberry. Unlike blackberries and raspberries, which form from a single flower, the mulberry forms from a cluster of flowers, with each flower creating a single tasty segment of fruit.
Kiwi skin.
This seed has lots of hooks, which allows it to cling to the outside of animals. Apparently many herbs use this technique to ensure the dispersal of their seeds.
And some others that you need to buy the book to find out more about:
An interesting slideshow of some of these photos is available here. Time to go make a fruit salad now.
PS: Thanks to Hackosphere for helping me to use selective expandable posts.
Alex Villegas has been photographing and recording wildlife in the Costa Rican jungle for some 15 years. This creepy crawly caterpillar, photographed by Alex, is not just visually stunning, it's also physically stunning -- if you're lucky enough to come across one of these, don't touch unless you want it to sting. More photos available on the BBC here.
I used to do bench work, and thought of my Petri-dished cells as cute little monkeys. But then I discovered the joys of writing about other's work; no sweat, no tears, just findings.
Troublemaker. Winner of Animal Portraits, by Stefano Unterthiner. 
The show. Winner of 15-17 category, by Catriona Parfitt. 
Window on the ice melt. Runner up in the One Earth Award, by Ira Meyer.
Cypress Swamp. Winner of In praise of plants, by Cece Fabbro. 
Polar Sunrise. Winner of Creative visions of Nature, by Miguel Lasa .
Shark nursery. Runner up in animals in their environments, by Brian Skerry.
