Science Art: Farnsworth–Hirsch Fusor (U.S. Patent 3,386,883)
The innards of a nuclear reactor, from a relatively recent patent application. That is, 1966. By inventor Philo T. Farnsworth. It’s a fusor, which is […]
Featured
Science Art: MOON: For the Benefit of Humanity, 2023
It’s a poster made by NASA for lunar exploration, showing some landers, space stations, and sample-taking equip…
Read moreScience Art: Bubble chamber with colour enhanced tracks, 2026
This is a CERN image from January 6, 2026, showing something that happened in the 1960s, but enhanced for 21st-…
Read moreScience Art: Dissection of Asterias rubens, by Hans Hillewaert.
Starfish anatomy.
If you want to know the parts, according to Dutch Wikipedia, they are:
Read moreLegend
1 Arm
2…
Science Art: Jupiter's Family of Comets, 1898
This is a diagram from A New Astronomy For Beginners, a textbook that’s about a century and a quarter old, or a…
Read moreSONG: Your Catalogue
SONG: “Your Catalogue”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: NBC News, “New wild cat species is ide…
Read moreScience Art: Beebe's Bathysphäre, 1934
This is an image of William Beebe’s bathysphere, as placed on Wikimedia Commons by ETH Bibliothek. It was creat…
Read moreScience Art: Batocera Wallacei, from Archives entomologiques ou Recueil contenant des illustrations d’insectes nouveaux our rares by James Thomson, 1857
Mmm. Borer beetles. Or, more precisely, Wallace’s long-horn beetle. Beetle-obsessed millionaire James Thomson’s book is on archive.org, but I found it via [Scientific Illustration].
Science Art: Laggania cambria, statue by Espen Horn (photo by H. Zell)
Click to embiggen This is an anomalocaridid – a really big, really old shrimp-like critter – named Laggania cambria. These were as big as it […]
Science Art (from new NASA exhibit): Titan, by Daniel Zeller (2005)
This ink-on-paper drawing of Saturn’s moon is one of the 70 pieces in the new “NASA/Art: 50 Years of Exploration” exhibit at the National Air […]
Science Art: “Fig 44: Painting of a Bantu Wedding Dance” from The Pre-Historic Period in South Africa, 1910
Click to embiggen It’s a party! I can’t tell if those are balloons or knobkerries. Either way, windows would have been broken… were there windows […]
SONG: Without the Sun
SONG: “Without the Sun.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Stress can shorten telomeres in childhood, Nature, 17 May […]
Science Art: RC540 stereo animation.gif by Brian0918
Click to embiggen and animate This is a large buckyball molecule – which is to say, a form of carbon, the same stuff in pencil […]
Science Art: CASENT0010677 (Cephalotes atratus), Antweb.
Click to embiggen Ants don’t actually spin webs. This striking image is one of what will ultimately be more than 11,700 photographs – no, wait, […]
Science Art: Xylophylla, by Olof Swartz, 1791 (detail)
Click to embiggen From a page of botanical babies drawn by Swedish botanist Olof Swartz just before the dawn of the 19th century. Swartz was […]
Helicoma spp + rhinoceros beetle, from Insecten-Belustigung, by AJ Rösel von Rosenhof, 1700s.
Click to embiggen From Insecten-Belustigung (Insect Amusements), a three-volume encyclopedia by 18th century German illustrator AJ Rösel von Rosenhof. [via Bibliodyssey, via Keep Your Pebbles.]
Science Art: Total Eclipse of the Sun, by E.L. Trouvelot, 1881-1882
Click to embiggen From the description at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery page: Total eclipse of the sun. Observed July 29, 1878, at […]
SONG: Grains of Aragonite
SONG: “Grains of Aragonite.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Primitive sea creature sports eyes made of rock, LiveScience, […]
Science Art: Chiton from Brehm’s Tierleben, 1860s
Click to embiggen A pair of chitons, playing catch. Or sleeping. Or enjoying a good meal. Or singing a chiton opera. With chitons, it’s very […]
Science Art: Imagining Mars, NASA-JPL, 1975
Click to embiggen This is what an artist in 1975 (or perhaps three artists) thought the future of Mars looked like. From the NASA-JPL description: […]
Science Art: Esbene, by Samuel de Champlain, c. 1602
Image from the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, who found it in Brief discours des choses plus remarquables que Samuel Champlain de Brouage á […]