Vision, and the means to capture it – photography – plays a momentous role in science.
I was much impressed by a remark of Aldous Huxley, that we owe our civilization largely to the fact that vision is an objective sense. An animal with an olfactory sense or with hearing, however well developed, could never have created science. A smell is either good or bad, and even hearing is never entirely neutral; music can convey emotions with an immediateness of which the sober visual arts are inca pable. No wonder that the very word “objective” has been appropriated by optics.
Dennis Gabor – Light and Information
It is therefore fitting to take a look at all the great pictures that have been recorded by all means.
Here is a selection of scientific picture competitions and galleries you might want to have a look at:
- Nikon Small World (see 2018’s gallery)
- Royal Photographic Society International Images for Science (here’s a 2017 subgallery)
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council photo competition (here’s the 2017 Gallery, the 2016 Gallery)
- Wellcome image awards (here’s the 2017 Gallery)
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Insight Investment Astronomy (see the 2018 gallery)
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JEOL Image Contest (Electronic micrograph competition)
- EIPBN Micrograph contest (scroll down on website)
- Twitter: @SciencePhoto
I found that The Atlantic and The Guardian usually have beautiful galleries.
Astronomy is an obvious domain where picture are breathtaking, but more so is space imaging.
Astronomy is an obvious domain where picture are breathtaking, but more so is space imaging.Here are some amazing pictures from the past few years:
- NASA New Horizon flight over Pluto
- NASA Cassini Mission (moon of Saturn, ref2)
- NASA Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO)
- NASA Juno Mission (and flight over Jupiter)
- ESA Gaia
The attack of the drones
Drones are also becoming more and more interesting…
And there’s always the fascinating IEEE Spectrum Video Friday, and their recent robot gallery.I recently figured out that my former colleague Jean-Baptiste Masson, who now works at Institut Paster, is developing Virtual Reality for Data Exploration, with his DIVA project. And the rest…
Mars, seen from Earth
Earth, seen from the moon
Windfarm star trails (from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich)