”[…] My attention was quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination—it was Mars, the god of war… As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void…”
— Edgar Rice Burroughs
[Earth, seen from Mars, photo taken by the Mars Curiosity Rover]
A very recent impact crater on Mars, formed between July 2010 and May 2012 and captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera in November of 2013.
The crater is approximately 30m in diameter; the explosion threw ejecta up to 15km from the impact site. Areas in which the red Martian dust has been blown away show as blue in the HiRISE image.
Top: A bronze zodiacal sphere upon an ornate dragon stand.
Bottom: An Azimuthal Horizon, Sextant and Zodiacal Sphere.
At the Ancient Observatory, Peking. Photographs ca. 1860, now available online as part of Wellcome Images.
An early photograph of the Moon, a daguerreotype taken by John W. Draper, March 26, 1840, in New York.
Cassini outdoes itself.
A mosaic of Saturn passing in front of the Sun from the point of view of Cassini.
There is a high-resolution version, an annotated version, and a description of the image.
Automated Transfer Vehicle Albert Einstein burns up on re-entry over the Pacific Ocean after resupplying the ISS back in June.
Poster for Stephen Hawking’s 2009 Time Travellers party, which was not advertised, naturally, until after the event had happened. By Peter Dean.
A scale model of an X-48C blended-wing aircraft in a NASA wind tunnel in Langley, Virginia. The model has been sprayed with fluorescent oil to enable scientists to study airflow patterns.
The brain of an individual suffering from lissencephaly, a rare disorder in which the cerebral cortex fails to develop ridges and folds, resulting in much-diminished surface area.
The brain is part of a collection at the University of Texas and, although it is labelled with a reference number, all that is known of the original patient is that they were a resident of the North Texas State Hospital, and died in 1970. Their name and any other details of their condition and case history are lost. This photograph is one of a series of such pictures taken by Adam Voorhes.
