Favorite science images?

[biologywatcher]

I was looking at some of the plates from Robert Hooke's Micrographia today, and thinking about how beautiful some of the imaging in science is. I really enjoy Hooke's drawings--The Flea is really worth a look. I also like the Mandelbrot set (who doesn't? I know I'm unoriginal.)

 

So I was wondering, inspired by the Book Talk forum, what are some of your favorite images from science? Photos, drawings, figures, x-rays? I'll bet there are some great ones.

[ajb]

I am going to say theHubble deep field image. It is a landmark in the study of our universe and shows some very early galaxies.

[Leader Bee]

Pictures such as this get me excited about science. I think it's the almost science fiction quality of it when it's really science fact

 

The Inside of a Tokamak Magnetic confinement reactor. Theres some lower quality pictures floating about of while it's turned on and the pinky/purple haze of the plasma is just mindblowing knowing we can do stuff like that.

[ajb]

The Inside of a Tokamak Magnetic confinement reactor.

 

 

This a picture of the tokamak at JET? If so my farther works there.

[Leader Bee]

To be honest, I pulled up the first image for Tokamak that google threw at me, however looking into it it does appear that this image is indeed the JET Tokamak in abbingdon. That's not your dad int he white suit is it?

[ajb]

To be honest, I pulled up the first image for Tokamak that google threw at me, however looking into it it does appear that this image is indeed the JET Tokamak in abbingdon.

 

I am fairly sure it is JET.

 

That's not your dad int he white suit is it?

 

No it is not. I don't know if there are any pictures of him on the JET website, I will look.

[mississippichem]

This is by far my favorite: (Courtesy of the nerds at IBM)

 

 

This is an atomic force microscopy image of pentacene. Truly striking! The problem with this technique is, it only works well for somewhat planar molecules with a lot of resonance. So you can see the resemblance, here is the bond line formula for pentacene.

 

 

It's nice to finally see a molecule with it's geometry. It is really nice to know that NMR, and X-ray diffraction are in fact correct!

 

I am going to say theHubble deep field image. It is a landmark in the study of our universe and shows some very early galaxies.

 

I would say that the Hubble Deep Field image is a very close second for me! I like images of the ridiculously small as well as the inconceivably large.

Edited June 22, 2011 by mississippichem

[Hal.]

 

 

This is a link for the Trinity Nuclear Test , Here !

Edited June 22, 2011 by Hal.

[Leader Bee]

The Ivy-Mike shot image is always pretty to look at too.

 

Edited June 23, 2011 by Leader Bee

[JohnB]

The Hubble Deep Field is top placed for me. When it came out I managed to get a hi res version, a 75 meg .jpg. You can sit and look at it for hours. How cool would it be to print it out and cover the bedroom ceiling with it?

 

Aside from that there are so many. Any from the Apollo missions. They're standing on the freaking moon! Two guys with cajones the size of cattle trucks, a tin can and a couple of Commodore 64 computers.

 

How about "The Pale Blue Dot"? Earth seen from Voyager.

 

Or "The Fingers of God"

http://quantum-cosmos.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Eagle_nebula_pillars.jpg

 

Or from the deep sea missions.

 

The world is a fascinating and wonderful place.

[TonyMcC]

Sometimes its not so much what you see as what you feel. I was in Singapore at the time and stayed up most of the night to see this on TV. Terrible picture, but hope you can see it. It is Apollo 13 making the last part of its journey through the atmosphere.

Edited June 23, 2011 by TonyMcC

[JohnB]

I remember. And so do many others.