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Finalist photos of Wellcome Image Awards show incredible science-related images

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The Wellcome Image Awards has been celebrating science, medicine, and life for 20 years now. This competition connects science and art in the most wonderful way, and the finalists of 2017 competition have officially been announced.

The final images are both scientifically significant and incredibly unique and beautiful. Aside from conventional photographs, there are also images created by using CT scanning, 3D printing, tractography, confocal microscopy and so on. The overall winner and winner of the Julie Dorrington award will be announced on the evening of March 15th at approximately 9 p.m.

If you think medicine and biology can’t go hand in hand with art, these images might change your opinion. We’ve chosen a few of our favorites, along with the explanations of the images. So take a look, enjoy and be amazed.

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The first ever recording of light’s “sonic boom” was made with the fastest high-speed camera in the world

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According to theoretical physics, nothing is faster than the speed of light. However, now you can see with your own eyes the first ever recording of a “sonic boom” – created by light. Or scientifically called a photonic Mach cone. It was recorded by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, and they used a custom high-speed camera to make the footage.

You’ve heard about sonic booms, and you’ve probably heard one at least once. They occur when an object exceeds the speed of sound. But if nothing is theoretically faster than light – how did they do this? In the description, the setting seems simple, and they built the custom high-speed camera – the fastest one in the world.

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This stunning video captures all four seasons through microscopes and macro lenses

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The team at Beauty of Science see the world a little differently to most of us. While we’re far too busy looking with our eyes, they’re seeing through microscopes and macro lenses. So many things happen on the small scale that we simply can’t see. Things we’d never even know about unless we went specifically looking for them, or somebody showed us to them.

And showing them to us is exactly where Beauty of Science excel. To round off their 2016 they’ve released the short film, Seasons – In a Small World. It shows incredible beauty found in the extremely small. Sights we’d not otherwise be able to see, and as the name suggests, it covers the four seasons found throughout the year. The colours, pace, timing, and action goes extremely well, set to the Strauss’ The Blue Danube.

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This is how light hit a subject in a portrait, nano second by nanosecond

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We always talk about how light hits a portrait in a certain way, but we never actually see how the light hits a portrait, one second its dark and then in the next second it’s lit. There is no hitting.

Well, here is how light actually hits a portrait. Of course you can not actually film how light travels, you would need a shutter speed of 1/<speed of light>, not to mention the insane triggering system you’d need.

But the folks at SEEC photography have the technology to video how light travels.

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This Is What Happens When You Toss Hot Tea At -40°C

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We’ve all seen those photos where a model in a pool or the ocean throws her hair back to create a beautiful splash, but I bet you’ve never seen the Arctic Circle version of it.

Equipped with a few tea-filled thermoses, and with science on his side, Photographer Michael Davies and his friend Markus headed out yesterday to create this perfectly timed photo.

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This Camera Uses Lasers To See Around Corners

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Whether one is trying to photograph far away objects with a massive telephoto lens or using a microscope to document the tiny creatures that surround us, the rule is simple – if you can see it, you can photograph it.

It turns out, however, that objects don’t need to be visible to the lens in order for the camera to “see” them, as a research team from Scotland recently demonstrated.

A first of its kind camera is able to spot and track moving objects around corners in real time using short pulses of light from a laser beam.

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A Geeky Crash Course On The Science of Camera Sensors

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//geek alert

Often when we talk about camera sensors we talk about “buckets” collecting “photons of light”. But talking about buckets is looking at the sensor mechanism from a bird’s eye view.

If you want a deeper understanding of how camera sensors work, Filmmaker IQ is giving a terrific lecture that goes down all the way to the physics and chemistry of collecting light and turning it into data.

You been warned that you will need to cope with Tetrahedral Crystals, Doping, PN Junctions and a few other electrical, chemical and engeneering terms. Nonetheless this is one of the more approchable lectures on the fine details of sensor-works.

// end geek alert

[The Science of Camera Sensors | Filmmaker IQ]

The Weird Story Of The US Sending Camera Coffins To Space And The Soviets Repurposing Them Into Moon Fax Cameras

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Sometimes real stories go beyond anything we can imagine. And this one from Damn Interesting podcast certainly exceeds any fictionous photography tale one can conceive. It involves espionage, camera coffins, secret film formulas and faxing a photo of the moon.

During the cold war the US initiated a Project Genetrix a secret project executed to gather intel from the closed border USSR. Project Genetrix launched huge 200-foot-tall, 100-foot-wide helium balloons into the air around strategic locations in Europe where the wind was supposed to carry them over the USSR where they will take photos and eventually exit the USSR air space to be collected by a friendly plane, mid air and have the film sent to the US for the intelligence force to decipher. This may sound like a kids play nowadays (and it is), but back in ’56 we did not have no gopros.

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NASA Photographs Supersonic Schockwaves From Earth; Says You Can Too With Only $3000 Of Consumer Level Gear

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Here’s some exciting potential for the astrophotography and/or science enthusiasts out there. NASA has announced they have been experimenting with different types of Schlieren based photography techniques to help them photograph things we typically can’t see, such as air density gradients and, in this case, supersonic schockwaves left behind by a moving aircarft.[Read More…]

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