The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

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Science Art

A scientific illustration of chicken breeds, in the form of an ornate oval frame bursting with proud and colorful domestic birds - 52 of them, to be precise.

Science Art: The Poultry of the World, 1868

5 January 2026 grant 0

Fifty-two breeds of chickens!

This is an educational poster from the 1800s, published by L. Prang & Co., Boston, the makers of “Prang’s American Chromos: FacSimiles… Read the rest “Science Art: The Poultry of the World, 1868”

Scientific illustration of planets drawn to scale.

Science Art: Diagram of the Comparative Sizes of the Planets, 1895

29 December 2025 grant 0

This is one of the 10 illustrations by Dan Beard for John Jacob Aster’s book A Journey In Other Worlds. Well, actually it’s the one diagram. The other nine images show things … Read the rest “Science Art: Diagram of the Comparative Sizes of the Planets, 1895”

A cell, grey and lumpy, sends out white fibers against a black background.

Science Art: NIH- NCI cancer research

22 December 2025 grant 0

An image of a cell, a neoplasm, from the National Institute of Health’s National Library of Medicine, the “Images from the History of Medicine” collection.

A “… Read the rest “Science Art: NIH- NCI cancer research”

Scientific illustration of biomechanics of stacked human bodies, using acrobats making a human tower on a beach. They seem to lean forward in an unsustainable way. Numbers and angles on the image show how centers of gravity make this possible.

Science Art: Akrobati, Lokální těžiště a hmotnosti, 2016

14 December 2025 grant 0

Biomechanics, with acrobats. A photo illustration by Karel Frydrýšek.

The description, translated from Czech, reads: “Four acrobats, chosen coordinate system, local center… Read the rest “Science Art: Akrobati, Lokální těžiště a hmotnosti, 2016”

Scientific illustration of the human hand as a measuring instrument for the constellations of the zodiac, showing their order and corresponding planets and months in a circular chart almost like a hand of Fatima.

Science Art: ORDEN DE LOS SIGNOS DEL ZODIACO, 1614.

8 December 2025 grant 0

From Theatro del mvndo, y del tiempo, which I’ve mentioned here before but have accessed yonder, on archive.org.

This is a chart of the human hand used as a measuring instrument for… Read the rest “Science Art: ORDEN DE LOS SIGNOS DEL ZODIACO, 1614.”

Scientific illustration of a space station from before rockets entered space, a white disk trailing cables like Lovecraftian tentacles, surrounding the reflective petals of a concave, segmented solar mirror.

Science Art: Noordung’s Space Station Habitat Wheel, 1929

30 November 2025 grant 0

Here’s a space station from before the first rocket left Earth’s atmosphere.

The description from DVIDS (Defense Visual Information Distribution Service) Hub, where I … Read the rest “Science Art: Noordung’s Space Station Habitat Wheel, 1929”

Scientific illustration of moths, orange and brown and green and black, pictured as if flying in tight formation.

Science Art: Plate LXXXI from A natural history of British moths, 1872.

23 November 2025 grant 0

These are English moths, of the geni Rhodophaea, Oncocera, Aphomia, Galleria, Melliphora, Halias and Sarrothripa. Each species in this book has a description like:

The situations where

… Read the rest “Science Art: Plate LXXXI from A natural history of British moths, 1872.”
Scientific illustration of two Hot Air Motors, devices that turned hot air into circular motion. It's a very 1890s-looking ad, with about 8 typefaces arrayed between two different mechanisms with vertical cylinders between metal legs supporting some kind of spinning wheel contraption.

Science Art: New Patent Hot Air Motors…, 1894

17 November 2025 grant 0

This is an ad from the back cover of Science Gossip magazine, a publication which I discovered via Nemfrog. These “hot-air motors” were made by “JOHN J. GRIFFIN &… Read the rest “Science Art: New Patent Hot Air Motors…, 1894”

Scientific illustration of the inside of a snake's eye - lens, cornea, retina in black and white.

Science Art: The Ophidian Eye in Vertical Section, 1942

10 November 2025 grant 0

When the snake sees, this is what the snake sees with. The snake in question is Natrix natrix, the barred grass snake. The image was “redrawn from Schwarz-Karsten, modified from original… Read the rest “Science Art: The Ophidian Eye in Vertical Section, 1942”

Scientific illustration of a fisher or fisher cat, a weasel relative that hunts in the woods of North America. Brown, sleek, looking down from a branch, curious and intense.

Science Art: Illustration of a Southern Sierra Nevada fisher

3 November 2025 grant 0

This is a mustelid, a relative of weasels and wolverines, called a fisher. The scientific name is Pekania pennanti. They’ve never been very common, and are getting less so. (A Florida… Read the rest “Science Art: Illustration of a Southern Sierra Nevada fisher”

Scientific illustration of RNA and mRNA doing stuff inside a cell.

Science Art:Vergleich der Aufnahme von RNA und modR in der Zelle, 2018

27 October 2025 grant 0

A diagram of two kinds of RNA doing their thing inside a cell (which is converting instructions from DNA into some kind of protein that a cell uses to do something.

Since this illustration … Read the rest “Science Art:Vergleich der Aufnahme von RNA und modR in der Zelle, 2018”

Scientific illustration of the coiled spirals and twisting arrows of a molecular diagram, hand drawn and colored.

Science Art: Ribbon schematic of the 3D structure of the protein triose phosphate isomerase

20 October 2025 grant 0

Jane Richardson drew this by hand and then colored it in back in 1981. It’s a protein molecule, or a diagram of how things move inside a protein molecule.

Here’s the description… Read the rest “Science Art: Ribbon schematic of the 3D structure of the protein triose phosphate isomerase”

Scientific illustration of a spiral galaxy snapped by a space telescope, a yellow and blue spiral whirling against the blackness of space, with a bonus image of an asteroid moving much closer to Earth off to the right side, visible as four thin, colored lines: snapped when the telescope took four different colored exposures.

Science Art: Yellow and blue, old and new, 2025

13 October 2025 grant 0

This is a photo from 10 days ago of stars millions of light-years away (so the picture is of things long, long before October 3).

The official credit is: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko,… Read the rest “Science Art: Yellow and blue, old and new, 2025”

Scientific illustration of a mapmaking tool and astronomical tool from the 1600s, a series of circles with numbers and arrows with gaps for determining distances and angles.

Science Art: Instrumento de Geographia y Cosmographia, 1606

6 October 2025 grant 0

This is a tool from Theatro del Mvndo y de el Tiempo, a book of star maps by Giovanni Paolo Gallucci, Miguel Perez, and Sebastian Muñoz. I found it in the David Rumsey Map Collection, the “Celestial”… Read the rest “Science Art: Instrumento de Geographia y Cosmographia, 1606”

Scientific illustration of ospreys, a family of black-and-white birds of prey, two parents feeding their young above the trees of a waterway.

Science Art: One Osprey Mouth at a Time II, by Phil’s 1stPix

29 September 2025 grant 0

Here’s a photo from the Encyclopedia of Life collection on Flickr, showing a family of the old bone-breakers, the fish-hawks, ospreys. They are a noble predator, moreso than some… Read the rest “Science Art: One Osprey Mouth at a Time II, by Phil’s 1stPix”

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  • Coriell Institute for Medical Research: Scientist - Repository
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Honorary Troubadours
  • Jonathan Coulton, Contributing Troubadour for Popular Science.
  • Laura Veirs, who knows her way around a polysyllable.
  • Thomas Dolby, godfather of scientific pop.
  • Squeaky, fact-based rock about fusion containment & rocket science.
  • Cosmos II, a.k.a. Boston University astronomer Alan Marscher.
  • Dr. Fiorella Terenzi, astrophysicist who makes music from cosmic radio sources.
  • Dr. Jim Webb, astronomy professor and acoustic guitarist.
  • Artichoke, the band behind 26 Scientists, Vols. I and II.
  • They Might Be Giants, unrelenting proponents of scientific popular song.
  • Symphonies of Science, the people who make Carl Sagan and others sing.
  • Giant Squid, doom metal about the sublime horrors of marine biology.
  • Gethan Dick,6 scientists, 6 musicians, 1 great album
Related Projects
  • Squid Pro Crow
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"Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?"
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, 1851

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