The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

“The Poetry of Reality” by Symphony of Science.

More. They made more.

Yes.

Information here.

Entered on 8 May 2010 at 6:41 in the Music, Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Florida Everglades, Landsat satellite, 2000

^{Click to embiggen}

This is the Florida Everglades, the widest, slowest river in the world. Anything that grows in South Florida does so because of fresh water from here – from cypress trees to sod farms to subdivisions. It’s the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles both live (crocodiles are the ones with pointy noses and teeth visible outside their mouths).

Image from the USGS “Earth As Art” gallery.

Entered on 25 April 2010 at 15:13 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Huge Solar Prominence Eruption, NASA STEREO

What, you think that Christmas cracker in Iceland was something? This was last week’s real eruption:

This prominence is 500,000 miles long. That’s a stream of plasma 62 and a half times longer than the Earth’s diameter. Volcano, shmolcano.

Captured by NASA’s STEREO system (the two spacecraft of the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory).

Entered on 21 April 2010 at 6:58 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Colour Wheel by Moses Harris, c.1770

^{Click to embiggen}

Moses Harris was an entomologist in Britain at about the time the American colonies started that unpleasantness with tea stamps and flintlock rifles.

As well as studying insects, he was also an engraver. Maybe that explains why he had a thing for the way color worked – how sea green was related to sunset orange, what was the clearest way to sort indigo from periwinkle. He organized them in a circle, showing every shade between the primary (red, yellow, blue) and “compound” (orange, green, violet) colors, laying the foundation for, well, every electronic thing that uses colors.

Your computer monitor being one of them.

[via]

Entered on 11 April 2010 at 6:40 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Cist of a Child Found at the Gates of Athens, by P. Broux

^{Click to embiggen}

I found this on the wonderful Old Book Illustrations blog. It’s from Les merveilles de l’industrie (The wonders of industry), an 1871 celebration of technological achievements written by Louis Figuier.

If you root around that blog, you’ll find plenty more of these illustrations, from Peruvian pottery to contemporary factory machinery. Look elsewhere on the web, and you can find wonderful things.

There’s plenty of information about the brilliant Dr. Figuier (also the author of Earth Before the Deluge) on the web, but not so much on the visionary M. (or Mlle.) Broux.

Entered on 4 April 2010 at 20:47 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Galileo’s Sunspots, 1612

^{Click to embiggen}.

Originally published in 1612 in published in Istoria e Dimostrazioni Intorno Alle Macchie Solari e Loro Accidenti Rome.

found via Woolgathersome.

Entered on 28 March 2010 at 19:49 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: “Rocket Ride Is New Planetarium Exhibit,” Popular Science Monthly, April 1938

^{Click to embiggen slightly}

Hey, look! PopSci just put 137 years of back issues on the internet for free. Science-aesthetic treasure!

They’re at Google Books, from whence this striking image came, or accessible through their own archive viewer.

The news spread on the Wired, but I first heard it via ear trumpet.

Entered on 7 March 2010 at 6:09 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Nikola Tesla’s Letterhead

If you’re one of history’s greatest electrical inventors, it is only suitable to have stationery that’s equal to your stature.

The central image is of the unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower; other inventions pictured include the oscillation transformer, steam-and-gas turbine and a telautomaton (that is, a remote-controlled device; this one is a boat).

Found via (where else?) Letterheady.com, an archive of interesting letterheads.

Entered on 28 February 2010 at 6:56 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Gingko bilobe, Dictionnaire encyclopédique Trousset, 1886 – 1891

This is the plant that produces those memory-enhancing extracts you see in the health food aisle of the drug store – the one that long-lived Chinese monks reputedly tended for thousands of years, brought from Japan to Europe by Dutch traders. It grew in Triassic forests when the dinosaurs were young. Whether or not it actually helps fight age-related memory loss is still the subject of some debate, but it certainly is a striking plant.

The picture came from the marvelous Old Book Illustrations site, which is an absolutely gorgeous resource. The encyclopedia engravings are just the beginning.

Entered on 21 February 2010 at 6:53 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

How Deep the Ocean?

Deep.

Entered on 15 February 2010 at 6:52 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print