MetaFilter posts tagged with science and photography

Science!

Artw — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:37:33 -0800

The Year's Most Amazing Scientific Images

Expeditions to the Polar Regions

netbros — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:01:49 -0800

The Polar Discovery team has documented science in action from pole to pole during the historic 2007-2009 International Polar Year, and covered five scientific expeditions. The science projects explored a range of topics from climate change and glaciers, to Earth’s geology, biology, ocean chemistry, circulation, and technology at the icy ends of the earth. Through photo essays and other multimedia, they explain how scientists collected data and what they discovered about the rapidly changing polar regions. From the awesome folks at WHOI.

Ass, Backwards

Rumple — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:10:08 -0800

It became necessary, one day, at Willet's Point, to destroy a worthless mule, and the subject was made the occasion of giving instruction to the military class there stationed. The mule was placed in proper position before the camera and duly focused. Upon the animal's forehead a cotton bag was tied containing six ounces of dynamite.....

Instantaneous Photography, 1881 style. From Scientific American, September 24, 1881: (a) Text (b) Engravings: Before the Explosion; After the Explosion. (c) Photographs: The Explosion. images from stereoviews.com; link via things magazine.

Murmur

OmieWise — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:59:01 -0800

Murmur. Photographs of flocking birds by Richard Barnes.
Boids. A program by Craig Reynolds modeling emergent behavior.
Swarm. A platform and wiki for agent-based modelers.

Minus the photographer's standard annoying flash interface!

hypersloth — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:06:39 -0800

The Art of Kevin Van Aelst

Happy 40th anniversary, mankind.

sexyrobot — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:01:13 -0800

Moon Landing Tapes Found! All the videos you've seen of the first moon landing are crap. Remember, back in the day, video cameras and recorders were two different things. So it went like this: camera on moon sends footage to Australia, where it's recorded on tape (and then those tapes were lost), then downsized onto a smaller monitor, which is filmed by another video camera, uploaded to satellite, and disseminated around the world. America watches it on TV, cheers. Some of this footage is filmed off of a television onto 16mm film. This is what goes into the national archives. Crap. So, the original tapes have been found (spoiler: they never left Australia). So what, right? How good could they be, recorded back in the late 60's and all? Pretty darn good, apparently...seems recording heads were much better than the output available at the time (like playing a Blu-Ray disc on a B&W TV), and several recent projects have shown that it's possible to extract very high resolution data from these old analog tapes. How hi-rez? High enough to see Neil Armstrong's nipples get hard. (be sure to click on that picture) So when can we see this amazing footage? Probably soon.

Up, Up, and Away

digaman — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:46:12 -0800

The 56-Euros-and-a-balloon teenage Catalonian space program.

The Solar Connection

digaman — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 09:01:23 -0800

Rethinking Earthrise. On the 40th anniversary of the NASA's Apollo 8 mission [caution: weird JFK animation], which answered Stewart Brand's epochal, LSD-inspired question "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?" with an unforgettable image of a seemingly fragile and isolated blue planet, Nature editor Oliver Morton -- author of a new book on photosynthesis called Eating the Sun -- disputes the notion that the Earth is fragile and isolated. "The fragility is an illusion," he writes. "The planet Earth is a remarkably robust thing, and this strength flows from its ancient and intimate connection to the cosmos beyond. To see the photo this way does not undermine its environmental relevance -- but it does recast it."

The Beautiful Mind

homunculus — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:18:20 -0800

The Beautiful Mind. An online gallery of neuroscience photographs. [Via]

"Demonstrations” by Caleb Charland

Surfin' Bird — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 16:43:15 -0800

Caleb Charland's photographs artistically demonstrate the laws of physics. In "Solid, Liquid, Gas," for example, three similar glass-tumbler shapes are positioned on a film of water. One glass is filled with a separation of water, oil and alcohol. Another, overturned, contains an extinguished candle which, having burned up the oxygen inside the vessel, created a vacuum that sucked the water inside. The third vessel and the other pictures are just cool.

A Place for Science

homunculus — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:50:26 -0800

A Place for Science. Where I do Science. Labs at Night. [Via grinding.be]

Museum of Nature

homunculus — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:30:20 -0800

The Museum of Nature by Ilkka Halso. [Via Ectoplasmosis!]

Kadath in the Cold Waste

Artw — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:13:02 -0800

Landsat Image Mosaic Of Antarctica UK and US researchers peice together the most detailed map of Antarctica yet, searching through years of data to find cloud free images.

photographing science

dhruva — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:43:39 -0800

Felice Frankel's photography "When people call Felice Frankel an artist, she winces. In the first place, the photographs she makes don't sell. In the second place, her images are not full of emotion or ideology or any other kind of message. As she says, "My stuff is about phenomena." [via]

The Micropolitan Museum

mediareport — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 17:02:28 -0800

The Institute for the Promotion of the Less than One Millimeter proudly presents The Micropolitan Museum of Microscopic Art Forms. [via]

HiRISE High-Res Images From Mars - Find the filing cabinet!

carsonb — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 11:09:22 -0800

The HiRISE camera is one of eleven instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Yesterday the first few images were downloaded from the MRO.

The water is reversible, but time is not...

disillusioned — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 07:57:05 -0800

"The trick to education is to teach people in such a way that they don't realize they're learning until it's too late."
Fluorescein-dyed water appears suspended in midair, only to "flow" upwards moments later. The careful dance of a splashing drop is frozen and taken for granted, painstakingly analyzed in a brilliant defiance of how water should behave. Such is the wonder of what modder Nate True calls his Time Fountain (YouTube embedded & worth it)—a well-documented, DIY version of classic science center favorite, the Water Piddler. MIT's own Strobe Alley is lined with photos created using the same technology, pioneered by Harold Eugene Edgerton, a professor whose work you're almost certainly familiar with. Naturally, some beautiful pieces have followed under the same ideal, courtesy Martin Waugh.

Art of Science

dhruva — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 00:27:16 -0800

Art of Science 2006 'images, videos and sounds—produced in the course of research or incorporating tools and concepts from science.' Previously on MeFi.

Let's just take one more...

d-no — Mon, 22 May 2006 03:01:57 -0800

How many group photographs do you have to take to get one in which nobody is blinking? Nic Svenson and Dr Piers Barnes work it out.

Nudibranchs

Gator — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:19:03 -0800

What are nudibranchs? Jewels of the sea. Page after page of photographs of these squishy hermaphrodites.

Fractal Bacteria

Gator — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 08:20:27 -0800

These images remind us never to underestimate our opponent. -- The science behind the art (.pdf). Fractal art by way of bacteria growin' in a petri dish. A few more images here.

Sprites (atmospheric) - new movie

hank — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 11:04:46 -0800

7000 frames per second Newscientist article, with links to the movies. "Atmospheric 'sprites' captured in explosive detail ... by researchers using an ultra-high-speed camera. "The best images yet of the flashes – which resemble a giant undulating jellyfish with its tentacles falling from a halo of light – have allowed the team to pick apart their structure and mechanics. "

Spelunkers, Ho!

Gator — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 09:19:50 -0800

The site design is somewhat unfortunate, but The Virtual Cave features lots of photos and information on, well, caves and cave formations. We've all heard of stalagmites and stalactites, but I'd never heard of cave draperies or cave pearls before. Then you've got your helictites, your aragonite, and your splash stalactites (found in lava tubes). And they've got a Show Caves Directory of caves in the United States that are open to the public, with addresses and contact information by state.

It's A Small World After All

Gator — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 06:56:19 -0800

The winners of the 2005 Nikon Small World Competition are up (previous years going back to 1977 are also worth a look). Photomicrography produces some amazing imagery, giving us glimpses into both the inner workings of living things, and the intricate structure of nonliving things (just click "find all").

Drawing of an anatomy

Gyan — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 12:53:39 -0800

Visions of Science