Science Art: Back Cover Detail, THE MIND, 1965.
I think this is a brain, but it might just be a maze. This is a small icon that appears on the lower left corner […]
Science Art
Science Art: Human Factors: Scanning Male and Standing Female, 1964.
This had to have been meant slightly tongue-in-cheek at the time… hadn’t it? Bespectacled man, meet Vitruvian lady. The cartoon couple are from an ad […]
Science Art: Amoeba. Actinophrys. by Philip Henry Gosse.
This is a scientific illustration done as a paper collage; that is, Philip Gosse took a sheet of paper, painted it as black as space, […]
Science Art: Pianta di Roma, by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1758.
It’s a map. An old map of an even older city. This is Piranesi’s map of ancient Rome (“and Forma Urbis”) from Le Antichità Romane, […]
Science Art: Four Phymata species from “Notas Sobre Phymatidae Neotropicales II,” October 1951.
An illustration of four ambush bugs from Anales de la Sociedad Científica Argentina, found in the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Or parts of ambush bugs. At […]
Science Art: HURRICANE FRAN – NARA – 17393787, by NASA.
Pictures of a storm from space. Big hurricanes are big! Fran was a Category 3 major hurricane – so a big storm, but far from […]
Science Art: Relative Position of Observer and Observed in Direct Ophthalmoscopy, Arthur W. Head, 1917.
You gotta get right up in there if you really want to see what’s going on in those eyes. This is an illustration from a […]
Science Art: Earth by Henry De la Beche, from Researches in Theoretical Geology, 1834.
This depiction of Earth might be the first such image of our planet as seen from space. No human (as far as we know) had […]
Science Art: Styxosaurus and Xiphactinus/i>, by ABelov2014.
Styxosaurus is, or was, an elasmosaur – an undersea predator with a long neck and sharp teeth, all the better for grabbing ammonites and prehistoric […]
Science Art: Science-Gossip cover page, Dec. 1899.
This is the cover page of Science-Gossip magazine, “an illustrated monthly record of nature, country lore, & applied science.” There are articles in here about […]
Science Art: Check Valve, 1882.
A valve to prevent backflow… so the river doesn’t wind up in the reservoir, or the effluent in the shower pipes. From A practical treatise […]
Science Art: Fluorescence and birefringence of 445 nm blue laser in calcite crystal, Jan Pavelka, 2011.
Calcite refracts light in a linear way – it’s why (as previous songs have discussed) it may have been used as a navigational tool by […]
Science Art: Nyctodactlyus, by F. John, c. 1915
This glimpse into a prehistoric world (which we now know should probably have at least a few more feathers in it) is part of the […]
Science Art: He2-104: The Southern Crab Nebula, 1999.
This is a nebula inside a nebula, caused by two stars pulling each other apart, as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. From the description […]
Science Art: Mouchot’s solar thermal collector from 1860, from Nordisk Familjebok, 1917.
This is a solar-powered generator. A funnel with sides angled at 90 degrees is pointed at the sun to catch its radiation, and those rays […]