Science Art | The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Scientific illustration of Surveyor-1, a nearly abstract collection of angles, legs, boxes, and support struts done in monochrome black and white, a photograph rendered as a ghostly stencil of a spacecraft.

Science Art: Detail from Tinsley Laboratories ad, 1966.

23 June 2025 grant 0

That’s a closeup of the Surveyor-1 satellite printed above an image of the Gemini orbital capsule, with the words “WE GAVE” (image of Surveyor-1) “a […]

Scientific illustration of Venus transiting in front of the Sun, as captured by the Solar Dynamics Observetory satellite, a flaming metallic orb girdled by a series of perfectly circular silhouettes making a diagonal line from the upper left to the middle right of the image.

Science Art: Transit of Venus in 2012.

9 June 2025 grant 0

This is Venus, moving in front of the Sun. Technically, I suppose it’s a lot of Venuses, or a chain of a lot of pictures […]

Scientific illustration of a white plume moth, long legs, very white against a black background.

Science Art: Pterophorus pentadactyla MHNT, by Didier Descouens

2 June 2025 grant 0

This is an image of a white plume moth, a photograph taken of a specimen in the Muséum de Toulouse in August of 2011. The […]

Scientific illustration of machines for moving water. Ducts, pumps, pistons, turbines.

Science Art: Turbines and Pumps, Manchester, 1882.

26 May 2025 grant 0

This is a waterwork as the Industrial Revolution hit full swing. It’s the final image in a book I’ve used here before, A practical treatise […]

Scientific illustration of a sawfly feeding on a plum, purplish-black insect glittering darkly over a white larva on a hard, green fruit.

Science Art: Hoplocampa minuta, Plommonstekel Ugglan, 1920.

19 May 2025 grant 0

“A kind of sawfly living on plum trees,” according to the Wikimedia Commons gallery of images from Nordisk familjebok. They’re considered a pest — the […]

Scientific illustration of pacemakers, defibrillators, monitors, loop recorders, and other electronic devices inserted into the anatomically correct hearts.

Science Art: Cardiac Devices, Medtronic

12 May 2025 grant 0

This is a poster snapped in my cardiologist’s (actually, electrophysiologist’s) office. These are all machines that are put into your heart to track its beating […]

Science Art: MRO Fairing Installation, 2005.

5 May 2025 grant 0

On a fiberglass sailboat, “fairing” is a thin coat of epoxy meant to smooth out all tiny bumps and creases that sanding can’t catch in […]

Scientific illustration of the surface of the Earth; a colorful satellite picture of stark-white Iceland in the blue-green North Atlantic.

Science Art: Iceland’s Coast Shows Hints of Spring, March 2024

28 April 2025 grant 0

A photo from the NASA PACE Ocean Sciences gallery. The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission is a satellite observatory created by Goddard Space Flight […]

scientific illustration of the propeller, gears, and supporting rod of a device meant to measure the flow of water (or any other fluid).

Science Art: Woltmann’s Tachometer, 1882

21 April 2025 grant 0

Oh, hydrology. This is a device to measure the speed of water flow, as described in A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating […]

Scientific illustration in the form of a board on which rows of mathematical knots are mounted, complex geometries in loops of cord.

Science Art: Mathematical Knot Table 01, by Rodrigo Argenton

13 April 2025 grant 0

These are knots. Not knots used to tie down boats or headstrong horses, but knots used to explore geometries of space. The display was made […]

Scientific illustration of portugugese man-of-war and tongued sarsia, medusans living near the ocean's surface in amorphous and tentacled splendor.

Science Art: Portuguese Man-Of-War, Tongued Sarsia, by Philip Henry Gosse

6 April 2025 grant 0

This image comes from Philip Henry Gosse’s A Year at the Shore, specifically, the month of October. (The year isn’t specified, but the book was […]

Scientific illustration of a mudskipper emerging from the water and looking out in air, with diagrams of mudskipper eyeballs and eye positioning.

Science Art: Periophthalmus koelreuteri, 1942.

31 March 2025 grant 0

This is a mudskipper who is being drawn here solely for the qualities of its bulbous, beautiful eyes. The illustration is from page 453 of […]

Scientific illustration of Abraham Lincoln's face compared to a sampling of "Old American" family members.

Science Art: Lincoln’s Measurements, compared with “Old Americans,” 1953 (detail).

24 March 2025 grant 0

This is part of a graphic from a 1953 issue of Natural History, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s magazine. The article it’s illustrating is […]

Scientific illustration of vast, mighty Olympus Mons stretching for miles and miles across the red-brown surface of Mars, as seen by a stereoscopic camera but rendered in 2D. www.flickr.com/photos/192271236@N03/54371099685/sizes/o/ Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY

Science Art: Mars, Olympus Mons near the terminator, Andrea Luck, 2025

18 March 2025 grant 0

This is the largest volcano in our solar system, as far as anybody knows — the mighty Olympus Mons, as snapped by the ESA Mars […]

Scientific illustration of air traffic control reading a plane's position on an instrument panel, while radar waves bounce in graphic zig-zags off an airplane flying high over a mountain range.

Science Art: Opportunities for Design & Development Engineers…, 1966.

12 March 2025 grant 0

This is the illustration from a full-page ad from the Hughes Aircraft Company in the Jan/Feb 1966 issue of Information Display magazine. This isn’t selling […]