• New collections:
  • The Big Picture hosts some fascinating images from the microscopic world.
  • Seed Magazine offers up a terrific science photography portfolio. [Via]
  • Discover Magazine features their picks for the Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2008. Truth be told, I found the set kind of underwhelming, but I do dig this Martian landslide. [Via]
  • “Punch hole clouds” and other funky atmospheric formations appear on Dark Roasted Blend. [Via Reen Bodo]
• And older ones:
  • Bibliodyssey’s Root & Trunk cutaway drawings come from the 17th century. (No Obama heads available then, apparently.)
  • Infographics of Antiquity: Check out the site’s set of De Aetatibus Mundi Imagines.

• “Catching Criminals With Photoshop”: In an interview Jim Hoerricks, LAPD, talks about how he uses the app in his work. For lots more from Jim, check out his Forensic Photoshop blog.

• Small worlds:
  • You won’t soon un-see this chicken embryo, among other neat micro bits. (Don’t worry, it’s not gory, just odd.)
  • Researchers have created "‘digital embryos,’ 3D visualizations of early embryonic development down to the position of individual cells and the division of those cells."
  • BibliOdyssey features beautiful drawings of micro-crustraceans from 1896.
  • Olympus has posted a gallery showing the winners of its BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition. [Via]

• Cold worlds:
  • The Big Picture shows some terrific scenes from Antarctica. I dig the Nacreous clouds (no relation ;-)).
  • Flickr features as set of 19th century Arctic exploration photos. [Via]

• Big worlds:
  • Miloslav Druckmuller combined 55 shots to create this striking eclipse image. Reader Vojtech Tryhuk passed along the links and says, “[He] is using a set of software specially developed for processing of Sun eclipse photographs, all written by himself and his colleagues.”
  • The Big Picture is running a Hubble Advent calendar, adding an eye-popping new image from the space telescope each day.
  • The International Space Station is turning 10 this month, and TBP rounds up a great sampling of images. If you’re low on time, just see this shot.

• Happy 50th birthday, NASA! [Via]
• The Big Picture features some excellent images of man on the Moon–both past and future.  (I’ve gotta get one of those ATHLETE vehicles for a future Death Valley outing.)  They also feature recent volcanic activity.
• The Hubble recently spotted–er, spied–Jupiter’s Great Red Spot eating the "Baby Red Spot."  More beautiful high-res shots of Jupiter & its moons–including amazing shots of volcanoes in action–are here.
• VAMP, the Virtual Astronomy Multimedia Project, aims to "vastly multiply the use of, astronomy image resources… by systematically linking resource archives worldwide."  The Astronomy Visualization Metadata (AVM) standard they’ve devised works builds on Adobe’s XMP technology. [Via Robert Hurt]

(In the Donnie Brasco, instead of DC punk, sense of the word)

• In Scientific American, Adobe collaborator Hany Farid writes about 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo.  [Via everyone ever]
• When we beefed up technical imaging tools in CS3 Extended, faking research results was not the goal! "The magnitude of the fraud is phenomenal," says Dr. Farid. [Via Doug Nelson]
• "In Russia, the in-flight movie watches you…"  Could aircraft security systems detect suspicious behavior just by staring at you?  Unsurprisingly Boing Boing thinks it’s "snake oil."

A few years ago I heard from a researcher at DuPont who was, as I recall, using Photoshop’s Histogram palette & other tools to analyze samples of Kevlar and other materials.  Later I visited the Johnson Space Flight Center and talked to a team about using Photoshop’s Ruler Tool to assess possible cracks in space shuttle heat shields photographed during flight.  No matter what you think a given feature is designed to do, customers will always find interesting ways to push it farther.

In that vein, Chris Ing gets crafty on JacksofScience.com, using the new analysis tools in PS CS3 Extended to do everything from estimating chicken density in Africa* (by analyzing the "integrated density" of various regions of an info graphic) to calculating the height of Kirsten Dunst (studiously cross-checked against something called Chickipedia–and no, I’m not feigning ignorance).  Should you find yourself "interested in comparing the circularity of your head to that of a friend," you’ve got a kindred spirit.

* Sorry, the pre-/post-hatched counting enhancement will have to wait for a future release. (We’ll sic Chris on it.) We’ve heard somewhere that it’s an important distinction…

Okay, so their connection to this blog is tenuous at best, but these semi-science-y vids are too fun not to share:

• A while back I mentioned the 150-T-shirt Human Flipbook that Colle+McVoy created for sandwich chain Erbert & Gerbert.  Now they’ve returned with
  CandleCannon.com.  Gotta love the insane whooping of geeks celebrating. [Via Dustin Black]
• Some 1,500 Belgian kids did their best Blue Man impression, launching sticky geysers of foam as they attempted to create the world’s largest Diet Coke/Mentos explosion.  I can’t find a video of this stunt, but these guys were apparently trying to outdo these folks in Cincinnati.

Okay, so their connection to this blog is tenuous at best, but these semi-science-y vids are too fun not to share:

• A while back I mentioned the 150-T-shirt Human Flipbook that Colle+McVoy created for sandwich chain Erbert & Gerbert.  Now they’ve returned with
  CandleCannon.com.  Gotta love the insane whooping of geeks celebrating. [Via Dustin Black]
• Some 1,500 Belgian kids did their best Blue Man impression, launching sticky geysers of foam as they attempted to create the world’s largest Diet Coke/Mentos explosion.  I can’t find a video of this stunt, but these guys were apparently trying to outdo these folks in Cincinnati.

• Mmmm, brains:
  • "Check out the big brain on Brett Alexander": Alexander Lervik scanned his own lobes & used a 3D printer to create the MyBrain lamp. [Via]
  • Eric Chudler has amassed a great collection of neuroscience stamps. [Via]
• That very special glow:
  • Taryn Simon produced a beautiful image of nuclear waste. In An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, "[h]er 70 color plates transform that which is off-limits or under-the-radar into a visible and intelligible form."  See and read more here.
  • Researchers are combining images to make "super-resolution" X-rays. [Via Ellis Vener]
• Space oddities:
  • The universe’s most powerful blast ever seen was witnessed last month.
  • The ever-groovy BibliOdyssey shares the Astronomical Handbook of 1718.
• Math for visuals:
  • Science News reports on visualizations of mathematics create remarkable artwork.  (In my own life math has usually produced a different sort of visualization.) [Via]
  • For more beauties, see the 2007 Mandelbrot contest winners. [Via]
  • Mixing alcohol + high IQs = Photomicrographs of cocktails. [Via]
• New Yorkers have been chatting about biology-based art.  (Somehow hacking lifeforms for the sake of cool visuals seems destined to end up in a future installment of Bad Idea Jeans.)

Okay, I’m getting a little far afield of scientific imaging per se, but I found the following interesting & thought you might as well.

• Oh man–tumbling hippies + Jabberwocky + amino acids: this 1971 MIT video has it all.  When that hoodling organ sountrack kicks in, you know it’s gonna be good. (Skip ahead 3:30 or so to the dancing.) [Via]
• Hmm–I wonder whether these come in “Ps” or “Ai”: periodic table rings. [Via Jeffrey Warnock]  (Of course, a more committed geek would go with knuckle tattoos–the arm already having been done.)
• The Chinese government is apparently trying to control the weather at the Olympics, literally shooting clouds out of the sky.  Seriously.
• Lunar images & infographics:
  • Here’s a map of the area covered by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on their Apollo 11 moon walks, superimposed on a soccer field and on a baseball diamond.  (I suppose if I were carrying a 400lb suit, I wouldn’t get too far, either.)  [Via]
  • Photographers captured last month’s total lunar eclipse in a series of photos.  I especially like this shot from Johnny Horne.
• I’m not sure that it constitutes scientific imaging, but Wikipedia hosts a beautiful column of fire.  Talk about an awesome blossom.

Okay, I’m getting a little far afield of scientific imaging per se, but I found the following interesting & thought you might as well.

• Oh man–tumbling hippies + Jabberwocky + amino acids: this 1971 MIT video has it all.  When that hoodling organ sountrack kicks in, you know it’s gonna be good. (Skip ahead 3:30 or so to the dancing.) [Via]
• Hmm–I wonder whether these come in “Ps” or “Ai”: periodic table rings. [Via Jeffrey Warnock]  (Of course, a more committed geek would go with knuckle tattoos–the arm already having been done.)
• The Chinese government is apparently trying to control the weather at the Olympics, literally shooting clouds out of the sky.  Seriously.
• Lunar images & infographics:
  • Here’s a map of the area covered by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on their Apollo 11 moon walks, superimposed on a soccer field and on a baseball diamond.  (I suppose if I were carrying a 400lb suit, I wouldn’t get too far, either.)  [Via]
  • Photographers captured last month’s total lunar eclipse in a series of photos.  I especially like this shot from Johnny Horne.
• I’m not sure that it constitutes scientific imaging, but Wikipedia hosts a beautiful column of fire.  Talk about an awesome blossom.

In honor of today being Pi Day (mmm, Pi…), it seems appropriate to share a wad of science-y bits:

• Hey baby, “Ever wonder what’s happening under Orion’s belt?” It’s among Five terrible fake astronomical pickup lines.
• Flour power: Artist Barry Stone creates galaxies from spilled flour. [Via]
• At age 19 I talked my way into an internship at Jane’s Defence Weekly.  Among other things, I found myself visiting the National Archives, sifting through then-recently declassified spy photos from the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Seeing the first US spy satellite photos makes me feel those cheesecloth gloves all over again.  I’m always amazed that the film was snagged in mid-air.  Related: these pix of the recent spy satellite shoot-down.
• “If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space,” say researchers at the University of Michigan, “and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of [the HERCULES laser].” Here’s the story.  [Via]
• Speaking of giant magnifying glasses in space, check out the Earth & Moon as seen from Mars–at a distance of 142 million kilometers. [Via]
• Core77 features an X-ray of a python that’s eaten some golf balls (for a rather interesting reason).
• BibliOdyssey features some great renderings of 19th-century airships.
• Can computer viruses be seen as art?
• True Dimensions features an amazing Lego model of the Discovery from 2001. [Via]

• NPR reports that “Bioartists’ Flesh Sculptures Draw Fans and Critics.”  Yeah, sawing open a cow femur to “paint” a “living sculpture of skin” will probably do that.  Given that it’s now possible to “print” beating heart cells, you know it was just a matter of time until peeps got busy with the creative mis(?)use.
• Supercomputers at Sandia National Laboratories offer new insights into the 1908 Tunguska disaster.  The generated image just happens to look pretty cool–kind of a fiery Polynesian sculpture.
• Is Facebook using image science to analyze your photos for fun and profit?  No, not yet–at least that we know of.  Thankfully it’s a hoax. [Via]
• Bugs on ‘roids?  In the NYT Natalie Angier talks about the seemingly crazy lengths to which animals will go to compete, survive, and reproduce.  “Male cardinals and house finches become obsessed each fall with eating berries and other ruddy fruits, not for their nutritional value,” but to make their plumage colorful.  (They’d probably buy AXE Plumage Spray, too, if they could just peck open the dispensers.)
• The paper features an informative Flash-based rendering of the Proton Therapy Institute’s new $125M cancer-zapping behemoth.
• On Flickr Carl Zimmer has assembled a photo set of science-related tattoos. [Via]
• “The National Geographic Society has not discovered ancient giant humans, despite rampant reports and pictures,” they swear.  They claim it’s all just a Photoshop job.  Sure, sure; but I’m looking over my shoulder, and up. 😉 [Via]

• NPR reports that “Bioartists’ Flesh Sculptures Draw Fans and Critics.”  Yeah, sawing open a cow femur to “paint” a “living sculpture of skin” will probably do that.  Given that it’s now possible to “print” beating heart cells, you know it was just a matter of time until peeps got busy with the creative mis(?)use.
• Supercomputers at Sandia National Laboratories offer new insights into the 1908 Tunguska disaster.  The generated image just happens to look pretty cool–kind of a fiery Polynesian sculpture.
• Is Facebook using image science to analyze your photos for fun and profit?  No, not yet–at least that we know of.  Thankfully it’s a hoax. [Via]
• Bugs on ‘roids?  In the NYT Natalie Angier talks about the seemingly crazy lengths to which animals will go to compete, survive, and reproduce.  “Male cardinals and house finches become obsessed each fall with eating berries and other ruddy fruits, not for their nutritional value,” but to make their plumage colorful.  (They’d probably buy AXE Plumage Spray, too, if they could just peck open the dispensers.)
• The paper features an informative Flash-based rendering of the Proton Therapy Institute’s new $125M cancer-zapping behemoth.
• On Flickr Carl Zimmer has assembled a photo set of science-related tattoos. [Via]
• “The National Geographic Society has not discovered ancient giant humans, despite rampant reports and pictures,” they swear.  They claim it’s all just a Photoshop job.  Sure, sure; but I’m looking over my shoulder, and up. 😉 [Via]

• Antarctica in HD: NASA’s LIMA, the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica, was pieced together from from more than 1,000 Landsat image captures.  CNET hosts an interesting gallery that show the progression of satellite images covering the frozen continent.  This shot of glacial flow is particularly, er, cool.
• Astrophotographer Scott Ireland is profiled on Adobe.com, talking about how Photoshop CS3 aids in his documentaries of everything from galaxies to volcanoes.  Many more samples of his work appear on his site.
• On a similar note, amateur astrophotographer Ian Megson uses Photoshop in his work.  Check out a recent capture.
• Diane Varner has taken a great portrait of a little mantis (?) dude.  (Dig her bees, ladybug, and locust, too.)
• Speaking of insects, check out these paintings done by bugs.  (Does PETA have jurisdiction here?)  [Via]
• Via Scott Kelby I just found Forensic Photoshop, the blog of Jim Hoerricks–Senior Forensic Video Analyst for the LAPD & Photoshop instructor.  I haven’t had time to peruse much yet, but topics like measuring images using PSCS3 Extended look interesting.
• According to National Geographic, paleontologists recently discovered a mummified dinosaur.  They’re using digital imaging to scan the results, producing images like this CT scan. [Via]

[Filed under Scientific & Technical Imaging]

• Antarctica in HD: NASA’s LIMA, the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica, was pieced together from from more than 1,000 Landsat image captures.  CNET hosts an interesting gallery that show the progression of satellite images covering the frozen continent.  This shot of glacial flow is particularly, er, cool.
• Astrophotographer Scott Ireland is profiled on Adobe.com, talking about how Photoshop CS3 aids in his documentaries of everything from galaxies to volcanoes.  Many more samples of his work appear on his site.
• On a similar note, amateur astrophotographer Ian Megson uses Photoshop in his work.  Check out a recent capture.
• Diane Varner has taken a great portrait of a little mantis (?) dude.  (Dig her bees, ladybug, and locust, too.)
• Speaking of insects, check out these paintings done by bugs.  (Does PETA have jurisdiction here?)  [Via]
• Via Scott Kelby I just found Forensic Photoshop, the blog of Jim Hoerricks–Senior Forensic Video Analyst for the LAPD & Photoshop instructor.  I haven’t had time to peruse much yet, but topics like measuring images using PSCS3 Extended look interesting.
• According to National Geographic, paleontologists recently discovered a mummified dinosaur.  They’re using digital imaging to scan the results, producing images like this CT scan. [Via]

[Filed under Scientific & Technical Imaging]

• The Japanese Kaguya probe has returned HD video footage shot as the probe flew over of the Moon’s surface. [Via] CNET is hosting a gallery of "Earthrise" photos.  Dig this shot from Apollo 8, too.
• Over on ColourLovers, Craig Conley points out colorful lunar maps depicting the layout of mineral deposits on the Moon’s surface.  You can get the complete originals from the US Geological Survey site. Here are a couple of examples in vector and raster form.

Droppin’ some Saturday science:

• We come in colors: “Brainbow” uses fluroescent proteins to let scientists see the individual neurons within mouse brains. [Via]
• X to the Ray:
  • Nick Veasey makes nifty X-Ray photography [Via].  I thought his feather scans looked familiar, and sure enough, he’s the guy behind the Creative Suite 2 artwork.
  • SFMOMA used X-rays to uncover a hidden Picasso buried beneath another artist’s work.
  • Elsewhere I stumbled upon a collection of 15 weird X-rays.  The nailgun victims remind me of work done by a props master I met on the set of CSI a couple years back.  He’d carved out a niche creating realistic depictions of trauma, going from raw materials to on-set print in just a few minutes.
• Photoshop-for-technical-imaging expert George Reis has released Photoshop CS3 for Forensics Professionals: A Complete Digital Imaging Course for Investigators.  PhotoshopSupport.com has the details, plus a link to a sample chapter (PDF).
• Evidently birds see magnetic fields. [Via]  (File next to squirrels with infrared-emitting tails.)
• And you thought your inkjet was precise: IBM prints with molecules. (Please, guys: draw angels on the head of a pin…)
• Morbid Anatomy blogs about the intersections of “art and medicine, death and culture.” They cover, among other things, a recent “Anatomy as Art” auction at Christie’s.
• Elsewhere in news of medical curiosities, check out this hard-shelled pushmi-pullyu.[Via]
• ScienceFaction offers scient-oriented stock imagery, while Fahad Sulehria “studies the science of art and the art of science” with his scientific illustrations.

Droppin’ some Saturday science:

• We come in colors: “Brainbow” uses fluroescent proteins to let scientists see the individual neurons within mouse brains. [Via]
• X to the Ray:
  • Nick Veasey makes nifty X-Ray photography [Via].  I thought his feather scans looked familiar, and sure enough, he’s the guy behind the Creative Suite 2 artwork.
  • SFMOMA used X-rays to uncover a hidden Picasso buried beneath another artist’s work.
  • Elsewhere I stumbled upon a collection of 15 weird X-rays.  The nailgun victims remind me of work done by a props master I met on the set of CSI a couple years back.  He’d carved out a niche creating realistic depictions of trauma, going from raw materials to on-set print in just a few minutes.
• Photoshop-for-technical-imaging expert George Reis has released Photoshop CS3 for Forensics Professionals: A Complete Digital Imaging Course for Investigators.  PhotoshopSupport.com has the details, plus a link to a sample chapter (PDF).
• Evidently birds see magnetic fields. [Via]  (File next to squirrels with infrared-emitting tails.)
• And you thought your inkjet was precise: IBM prints with molecules. (Please, guys: draw angels on the head of a pin…)
• Morbid Anatomy blogs about the intersections of “art and medicine, death and culture.” They cover, among other things, a recent “Anatomy as Art” auction at Christie’s.
• Elsewhere in news of medical curiosities, check out this hard-shelled pushmi-pullyu.[Via]
• ScienceFaction offers scient-oriented stock imagery, while Fahad Sulehria “studies the science of art and the art of science” with his scientific illustrations.

Spacing out this weekend:

• Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the NY Times offers a nice, brief interactive tour of that first human-made spacecraft, as well as a timeline of space exploration.
• Evidently the moon wobbles during a lunar cycle, as this timelapse animation shows. [Via]
• Speaking of our satellite, Adobe’s resident Academy Award-winner Mike Kanfer enthusiastically recommends the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.  I get chills watching the trailer.
• What if we had no moon?  In Astrobiology Magazine scientist Bernard Foing charts the moon’s influences on the history of earth, from the formation of solid land to the development of our eyes. [Via]
• CNET shows images from a Japanese space probe in lunar orbit. They report, “China is expected to launch its first lunar exploration satellite later this month; India has plans for a moon launch in April 2008; the next U.S. moon mission is slated for 2008; and Russia could be flying private citizens around the moon and back as early as 2009.”
• Meanwhile Google is offering a $30 million prize to a private team that can land a robot on the moon.
• And speaking of Google, hide your crops, Cheech: law enforcement uses Google Earth.
• Fast networking technology has enabled researchers to assemble an Earth-sized telescope. [Via]
• Nerding out on Wikipedia, I happened across a cool shot of a Delta IV rocket lift-off.

[File under Scientific & Technical Imaging]

Spacing out this weekend:

• Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the NY Times offers a nice, brief interactive tour of that first human-made spacecraft, as well as a timeline of space exploration.
• Evidently the moon wobbles during a lunar cycle, as this timelapse animation shows. [Via]
• Speaking of our satellite, Adobe’s resident Academy Award-winner Mike Kanfer enthusiastically recommends the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.  I get chills watching the trailer.
• What if we had no moon?  In Astrobiology Magazine scientist Bernard Foing charts the moon’s influences on the history of earth, from the formation of solid land to the development of our eyes. [Via]
• CNET shows images from a Japanese space probe in lunar orbit. They report, “China is expected to launch its first lunar exploration satellite later this month; India has plans for a moon launch in April 2008; the next U.S. moon mission is slated for 2008; and Russia could be flying private citizens around the moon and back as early as 2009.”
• Meanwhile Google is offering a $30 million prize to a private team that can land a robot on the moon.
• And speaking of Google, hide your crops, Cheech: law enforcement uses Google Earth.
• Fast networking technology has enabled researchers to assemble an Earth-sized telescope. [Via]
• Nerding out on Wikipedia, I happened across a cool shot of a Delta IV rocket lift-off.

[File under Scientific & Technical Imaging]

Lots of cool scientific & technical imaging has popped up recently:

• Photoshop’s Twirl filter is no longer a bastion for Internet creeps: The NY Times shares some (but not all) details of how Interpol was able to reverse the common image distortion.  Now they’re seeking the public’s help in catching the guy.  [Via Leon Brown]   (Through some weird cosmic alignment of forces, Google Alerts happened to pop up a tutorial on digitally obscuring faces at just the same time.)
• Photoshop & fish tales: digital imaging & sport fishing don’t go hand in hand, according to BountyFishing.com. The NYT has more info on how these folks worked with Prof. Hany Farid (see previous) to detect misrepresentations. [Via Rob Corell]
• Edited by documentary filmmaker Claire Nouvian, The Deep "features more than 200 photos of the insanely strange and beautiful denizens of our oceans."  Smithsonian.com features a small gallery of the images, plus an article covering the project.
• Nikon’s Small World competition has been honoring terrific microscopic photography for more than 30 years.  Check out a gallery of this year’s winners. [Via]
• It’s fun to compare these modern depictions of the natural world against Arcana Entomologica and the Handbook of Animal Anatomy, both courtesy of BibliOdyssey.
• Elsewhere in the world of archaic technical materials, the National Institutes of Health have posted high-res scans of public domain anatomical atlases.  I used to love incorporating stuff like this into my designs.  (Thanks, dead artists of antiquity!) [Via]
• Science Magazine has announced their 2007 visualization challenge winners.
• NASA’s Cassini probe is sending back detailed pictures of Saturn’s moons.
• One other NASA note: the International Space Station site picked up a 2007 MAX Award from Adobe.  The site features 360-degree views of the inside of several space station modules, and the first update is due to go live tomorrow.

Lots of cool scientific & technical imaging has popped up recently:

• Photoshop’s Twirl filter is no longer a bastion for Internet creeps: The NY Times shares some (but not all) details of how Interpol was able to reverse the common image distortion.  Now they’re seeking the public’s help in catching the guy.  [Via Leon Brown]   (Through some weird cosmic alignment of forces, Google Alerts happened to pop up a tutorial on digitally obscuring faces at just the same time.)
• Photoshop & fish tales: digital imaging & sport fishing don’t go hand in hand, according to BountyFishing.com. The NYT has more info on how these folks worked with Prof. Hany Farid (see previous) to detect misrepresentations. [Via Rob Corell]
• Edited by documentary filmmaker Claire Nouvian, The Deep "features more than 200 photos of the insanely strange and beautiful denizens of our oceans."  Smithsonian.com features a small gallery of the images, plus an article covering the project.
• Nikon’s Small World competition has been honoring terrific microscopic photography for more than 30 years.  Check out a gallery of this year’s winners. [Via]
• It’s fun to compare these modern depictions of the natural world against Arcana Entomologica and the Handbook of Animal Anatomy, both courtesy of BibliOdyssey.
• Elsewhere in the world of archaic technical materials, the National Institutes of Health have posted high-res scans of public domain anatomical atlases.  I used to love incorporating stuff like this into my designs.  (Thanks, dead artists of antiquity!) [Via]
• Science Magazine has announced their 2007 visualization challenge winners.
• NASA’s Cassini probe is sending back detailed pictures of Saturn’s moons.
• One other NASA note: the International Space Station site picked up a 2007 MAX Award from Adobe.  The site features 360-degree views of the inside of several space station modules, and the first update is due to go live tomorrow.

Medical imaging company Aperio has created what it’s calling "the world’s first terapixel image"–i.e. an image containing more than one trillion pixels. The image itself, depicting a breast cancer scan*, is a 1,095,630 x 939,495 pixel whopper that tips the scales at 2875.94GB.  More info is in the press release.

From a Photoshop/Adobe perspective, it’s cool to see this image displayed via the Flash Player, using the same Zoomify technology that’s in Photoshop CS3.  The folks at Aperio write,

You may be interested to know Aperio has implemented BigTIFF – support for TIFF files larger than 4GB.  After linking the new version of libtiff into our ImageServer, we were able to use the Zoomify viewer with no changes at all.  Pretty impressive. By way of demonstration we’ve made the world’s first terapixel image, and it can be viewed right in a standard web browser with the Zoomify technology."

[For more Zoomify hugeness, check out the 8.6 gigapixel fresco mentioned previously.]

*Not the most asethetically compelling image–unless, I suppose, it proves that one doesn’t have breast cancer

//na// Scientific imaging bits of interest:

• NASA’s Cassini probe has captured a weirdly hexagonal storm on Saturn. [Via]
• The Nature Photographers site features tips on photographing star trails using a digital SLR. [Via]
• Going way into the scientific-imaging archives, BibliOdyssey features an archaic comet book.  The airborne sandworms it shows are something else, eh?   (In an unrelated post on the site, check out this bad boy.)
• The ESA has posted images from Venus Express, peeking through the planet’s clouds.  Unfortunately the most striking image is largely an artist’s conception.

//na// Scientific imaging bits of interest:

• NASA’s Cassini probe has captured a weirdly hexagonal storm on Saturn. [Via]
• The Nature Photographers site features tips on photographing star trails using a digital SLR. [Via]
• Going way into the scientific-imaging archives, BibliOdyssey features an archaic comet book.  The airborne sandworms it shows are something else, eh?   (In an unrelated post on the site, check out this bad boy.)
• The ESA has posted images from Venus Express, peeking through the planet’s clouds.  Unfortunately the most striking image is largely an artist’s conception.

• The Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society has taken the progressive-image-tiles-through-Flash approach (a la Zoomify in Photoshop CS3) and done something most cool: presenting a life-sized whale online.  I love the subtle touch of including aquatic schmutz that floats past the whale & viewer. [Via]
• NASA’s STEREO-B observatory recently caught a lunar transit of the sun.  Check out this (literally) otherworldly video of the event. [Via]

NASA’s JPL has surveyed the public & posted the favorite photos of Saturn taken by the Cassini-Huygens mission. You can see more from their collection here. [Via]  And if you’d like to try your own hand at photographing the planet, see Space.com’s advice on how to Capture the Lord of the Rings (with a little help from Photoshop).

The space connection keeps reminding me of a drive-by beat-down administered to the band Train (the guys who brought you "Drops of Jupiter," and who have apparently sold four million albums–to whom, no one knows): "Watching her cry, I knew Benchley had hit bottom. I had reached the mythical state of total anti-rock, which I call ‘Train,’ after the band. When the head of every drum is torn, and all guitars out of tune, when the microphone melts in your hand, that’s Train, and I was in Train all the way up to my drops of Jupiter."

Psst–read any good overviews of the Functions of the Nonsense-Mediated mRNA Decay Pathway in Drosophila Development lately?  (Yeah, who hasn’t, I know…)  I mention it because a mutant phenotype (specifically, a fluorescent protein in fruit flies) has now been nicknamed "photoshop" by researchers Mark Metzstein & Mark Krasnow.  ["Shouldn’t that be Adobe® Photoshop® software?" murmur a dozen voices in Adobe Legal. 😉 ]  They write, "We named this the ‘photoshop’ phenotype because it increased visualization of clones like that achieved by digital enhancement with Photoshop software (Adobe, http://www.adobe.com)."  [Ah, says Legal.]  As a highly nonsense-mediated individual, I say very cool, guys!

Surfing the Nodes of Ranvier,
J.

• Apple.com features the work of Harvard/MIT researcher Felice Frankel, showing how she uses Photoshop to depict the beauty in a chemical reaction (see animation).
• In their continuing quest to blow my little Arts & Legos mind, scientists have unveiled a 3D map of dark matter (see larger image). [Via]  I had to smile on this one, remembering that the Photoshop CS1 was codenamed "Dark Matter."  In one of the early go/no go meetings, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen–who is from Brooklyn & very much has the accent to prove it–joked, "I’d really like to thank you for picking a name with two ‘R’s in it.  Daahk Mattah…"
• It’s not imaging-related, but the Celestron Sky Scout has been a huge hit at the Nack compound.  (I have it on good authority that I was recently hitched, but you wouldn’t know it on these cold, clear nights: la esposa keeps bailing on me to learn about the heavens courtesy of the Sky Scout!)

• Apple.com features the work of Harvard/MIT researcher Felice Frankel, showing how she uses Photoshop to depict the beauty in a chemical reaction (see animation).
• In their continuing quest to blow my little Arts & Legos mind, scientists have unveiled a 3D map of dark matter (see larger image). [Via]  I had to smile on this one, remembering that the Photoshop CS1 was codenamed "Dark Matter."  In one of the early go/no go meetings, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen–who is from Brooklyn & very much has the accent to prove it–joked, "I’d really like to thank you for picking a name with two ‘R’s in it.  Daahk Mattah…"
• It’s not imaging-related, but the Celestron Sky Scout has been a huge hit at the Nack compound.  (I have it on good authority that I was recently hitched, but you wouldn’t know it on these cold, clear nights: la esposa keeps bailing on me to learn about the heavens courtesy of the Sky Scout!)

Removing data from a digital file is sometimes easier said than done. Redacting PDFs has sometimes proven tricky (something the Acrobat team has worked to address), and now a research report notes methods for unscrambling numbers or text that have been obscured via simple Photoshop tricks. [Via]

I asked a few Photoshop engieneers for comments & got some useful nuggets:

• Gregg Wilensky says, "The ability to recover text that is blurred is limited by the amount of
  noise in the image (and knowledge of the blurring function). So, adding
  a bunch of noise to the image is better, but still not foolproof. I
  would suggest completely replacing the text with noise and blurring that
  (for aesthetics)."
• Jerry Harris notes, "Having a known set of limited targets, OCR numbers in his example, makes the
  reconstruction task a bit more realistic in terms of useful results than
  most."
• And Todor Georgiev writes, "Using a known set of blur kernels (those in Photoshop!),
  and a known set of targets, limits the set of possible outcomes
  and makes this technique work. But slightly change lighting
  and/or use custom blur filter, and your data is safe."

• A number of folks have commented on the amazing images of animals in the womb, so I’m following up with some more info I’ve found.  In support of the special program airing tonight on its namesake channel (9PM PST), National Geographic has posted some great online resources, including a video preview, an interactive timeline, and more photos. The show is scheduled to air tomorrow night as well.
• This NYT story about last night’s launch of the shuttle Discovery includes a couple of really dramatic photos. NASA.gov has another, as well as an image of the shuttle’s rotating service structure at night. (Seeing that shot, I can almost smell the airplane glue & feel the Xacto cuts as I struggled to build a model version years ago. That effort did not end well…) And here’s a video of the launch.

• The Photoshop team got a treat today when astro photographer David Malin paid us a visit.  David shared a selection of his work and techniques with the team, and put in some good requests (some of which we are delighted to be addressing).  His site features a wealth of photos, including 50 Favourite Images from the Anglo-Australian Observatory. 
• Along similar lines, I recently discovered a collection of 100 Great Images from the Hubble, as well as this stunner.  And speaking of the famous telescope, in response to the news that it’s been decided to keep the Hubble flying (yeah!), the NYT has posted a short essay on the history of "NASA’s Comeback Kid." As always, if you want to open the raw imagery from the Hubble directly in Photoshop, check out the free FITS Liberator plug-in.
• My friend Phil Metschan, an art director at ILM, has created some concept art for his rocket-science brother’s proposed space flight technology. (More pix are on pp. 41-45 of the PDF.)  It’s kind of funny for me to think that just a few years ago Phil and I were in NYC, building the Gucci site in Flash.  Seems a world away now…

[At the other end of the size spectrum, David has created some beautiful micrographs from very tiny subjects (crystals, etc.).  The images remind me a bit of Mac pioneer Bill Atkinson‘s ridiculously lovely coffee table book Within the Stone.]

• Mikons is "a new form of self-expression that connects people through visual symbols (personal tags)," and the site creators call their Mikon Machine (created using Director) "the most advanced drawing tool of its kind available on the Internet."
  They plan to add color, text input, a product builder, and a store to enable artists to sell their designs.
• Cumulate Draw offers a some similar capabilities but is done by leveraging the scripting engines built into modern Web browsers [Via]
• If having humans in the loop gets you down, why not try a little tree art? British artist Tim Knowles attaches pens to the branches of various trees, letting them draw whatever the wind dictates.  I’m having trouble getting the photos to appear in my browser, but here’s a link in case you have more luck.
• Not out there enough for you?  Okay, how about 50,000 rat neurons in a petri dish driving a robot arm in Australia, translating neural activity into drawings? Read all about it.

• The Cassini space probe has produced a stunning image of Saturn and its rings.  The panoramic view was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours. Color in the view was created by digitally compositing ultraviolet, infrared and clear filter images and was then adjusted to resemble natural color.  Check it out in high res.  [Via]
• Elsewhere in space, Wikipedia features a great shot of a sunset on Mars (in no way to be confused with Breakfast on Pluto).   And in case you missed it earlier, check out that shot of the space shuttle in front of the sun.  As a celebutante would say, "That hot."
• Slightly closer to Earth, the NYT has a story and slide show of backyard rocket builders in the desert. Their creations–some able to fly to 94,000 feet–are a bit more impressive than my old DIY constructions (paper towel tube, "D" rocket engine, and as many Black Cats as I could cram in). Yeah, but mine blowed up real good.
• And much, much closer to earth, the NYT shows the entomological images of Dr. Thomas Eisner. This bombardier beetle is out of hand, though the shell constructions seem a little close to the rogue taxidermy of MART.

Photoshop’s use in the sciences has been getting some good press lately:

• Space.com talks about Photoshop being used to bring new data out of 25-year-old Soviet footage from Venus. [Via]
• Wired has a story about scientists analyzing the Mona Lisa’s smile using, among other things, the app’s Gaussian Blur filter. [Via]
• Lockergnome talks about the tools being used to restore a 700-year-old sacred Hindu text.

(See the Science & Tech category for more stories.)