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Science Art: Detail from Tinsley Laboratories ad, 1966. - https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/23/science-art-detail-from-tinsley-laboratories-ad-1966/ 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 mirror and" (image of Gemini) "the windows." The explanation is that Tinsley Laboratories is a pioneer in space science: The amazing 11,130 pictures transmitted by Surveyor-1, were dependent upon a Brush Beryllium Substrate mirror, optically fabricated by Tinsley .... The optically precise photographic windows for Gemini, were also produced by Tinsley. Tinsley, where engineering and electronic capabilities join over thirty years of precision optical experience. It's an ad from the Sep/Oct 1966 issue of Informational Display, when lenses and mirrors could really make a difference in the Space Race.

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Science Art: Transit of Venus in 2012. - https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/09/science-art-transit-of-venus-in-2012/ 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 of Venus. It was made by NASA/SDO, AIA, or NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory developed at the Goddard Space Center. Here's the description from Wikimedia Commons, where I found the image: This image shows a sequence of photographs by NASA's SDO spacecraft, taken in the extreme ultraviolet spectrum (171 Angstroms), and stitched together to show Venus's path across the face of the Sun. On June 5-6 2012, SDO collected images of one of the rarest predictable solar events: the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. This event happens in pairs eight years apart that are separated from each other by 105 or 121 years. The previous transit was in 2004 and the next will not happen until 2117.

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Science Art: Pterophorus pentadactyla MHNT, by Didier Descouens - https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/06/02/science-art-pterophorus-pentadactyla-mhnt-by-didier-descouens/ 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 moths really look like this in life, too. But this one was on display in a museum. The photo was taken as part of Projet Phoebus, a push by the museum to get photographs of all of its collection on Wikimedia Commons. I think 10 years ago, we were as a planet less cynical about the potential of the internet as a repository of knowledge and a site of shared projects. I'm glad this one existed, or exists, still. Stark and monochromatic. White wings spread wide.

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Science Art: Turbines and Pumps, Manchester, 1882. - https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/26/science-art-turbines-and-pumps-manchester-1882/ 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 on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating to the hydrology, hydrodynamics, and practical construction of water works, in North America on archive.org. Two pages later, the text turns from mechanical concerns to more of a philosophy for living: Let the designer and builder of the public water system feel that his work must be complete, durable, and unfailing, and let this feeling guide his whole thought and energy, then there is little danger of his going astray as to system, whether it be called "gravitation," "reservoir," "stand-pipe," or "direct pressure," or of his being enamored with lauded but suspicious mechanical pumping automatons, and uncertain valve and hydrant fixtures. When the people have learned to depend, or must of necessity depend, upon the public pipes for their indispensable water, it must flow unceasingly as does the blood in our veins. All elements of uncertainty must be overcome, and the safest and most reliable structures and machines be provided. Words to live by. It almost sounds like Chinese ethical treatises of a thousand years earlier.

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Science Art: Hoplocampa minuta, Plommonstekel Ugglan, 1920. - https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/19/science-art-hoplocampa-minuta-plommonstekel-ugglan-1920/ "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 young larvae feed on new fruit. White worms on green plums.

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Science Art: Cardiac Devices, Medtronic - https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/12/science-art-cardiac-devices-medtronic/ 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 and alter that rhythm with electrical pulses. There's a QR code on the poster linking to HeartDeviceAnswers.com, which has cute little animations done in the same mid-century-ish art style showing the kinds of devices at work, either zapping hearts that have gone all twitchy or recording and raising alerts for hearts that have started doing the wrong sort of rhythms altogether. What strange things hearts are.

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Science Art: MRO Fairing Installation, 2005. - https://guildofscientifictroubadours.com/2025/05/05/science-art-mro-fairing-installation-2005/ 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 order to make the hull move through the water (or hands and feet move across the deck) as smoothly as possible. On a Martian spaceship, it's a little different. Here's the description, from the San Diego Air and Space Museum's Flickr gallery of NASA images: KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. Workers in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility maneuver the second half of the fairing toward the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (right) for installation. The fairing protects the spacecraft during launch and flight through the atmosphere. Once in space, it is jettisoned. Launch of the MRO aboard an Atlas V rocket will be from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The MRO is the next major step in Mars exploration and scheduled for launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in a window opening Aug. 10. The MRO is an important next step in fulfilling NASAs vision of space exploration and ultimately sending human explorers to Mars and beyond. Image from NASA, originally appeared on this site: science.ksc.nasa.gov/gallery/photos/

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Characteristic Sterns, from GRG Worcester's JUNKS AND SAMPANS OF THE UPPER YANGTZE, Published by Order of the General Inspector of Customs, 1940.

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

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Science Art: Woltmann's Tachometer, 1882

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Science Art: Mathematical Knot Table 01, by Rodrigo Argenton

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

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Science Art: Periophthalmus koelreuteri, 1942.

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Science Art: Lincoln's Measurements, compared with "Old Americans," 1953 (detail).

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Science Art: Cystoidea, by Ernst Haeckel

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Science Art: Boulder ejected from Halemaumau, at Kīlauea, May 11, 1925

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Science Art: Reconstrucción de Tuzoia canadensis, con Anomalocaris atrás, 2022.