Magnesium wire inside glass case. The magnesium is ignited to illuminate as the flash for use in vintage cameras. (via BOB008)

History of Space Exploration

In December of 1968, the United States sent Apollo 8 on the first manned mission to orbit the moon. On this spacecraft was William Anders, who, on the 24th of December, took this iconic photograph of the Earth partially obscured by the moon’s horizon.

An image of Jupiter as taken by the Voyager 1. It was produced by layering three black and white photos with different color filters and recombining them. (via)

Pictured here is a pharaoh cuttlefish in the Daymaniyat Islands Nature Reserve. It is releasing its plume of ink in defense due to being stabbed by a diver, since net fishing on these protected coral reefs is prohibited, but other methods are legal, such as fishing with traditional long-handled hooks. (via)

This photograph, by Marco Lorenzi of Italy, won the Astronomy Photograph of the Year 2011 in the Deep Space Category. It displays the aftermath of a supernova explosion, which occurs when a star many times larger and older than our sun violently dies, that occurred over 10,000 years ago. This expanding shell of heated bass and debris now covers an area of the sky which is twenty times bigger than the disc of the full Moon.

These Australian sundew plants (Drosera stolonifera) may look innocent, but in reality they are one of the most cleverly disguised carnivorous plants. Bugs are attracted to what appear to be drops of dew to satiate their thirst, only to be trapped in the sticky decoy tentacles.
(Photo via National Geographic) 

A view of western Europe (Specifically, Belgium and the Netherlands) from the International Space Station on January 22. Also visible are, British Isles which are partially obscured by the solar array panels on the left. The other piece of visible hardware is Canadarm2, a remote manipulator for the space station.

Photographer Alexander Semenov shoots rare creatures found in the White Sea, northwest of Russia. This underwater slug is just one of the many (all incredible) shots you can browse through at Semenov’s site.

This unusual image was photographed through the Cupola on the International Space Station by one of the Expedition 30 crew members.

The lake just above the bracket-mounted camera at center is Egirdir Golu in Turkey, located at 38.05 degrees north latitude and 30.89 degrees east longitude. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is docked to the station at lower right and part of the Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) can be seen just above it. 

An image of the ribbon-like Rakaia river in New Zealand has won an online vote for DigitalGlobe’s best satellite image of 2011.

The river, shown in March 2011, runs for about 150km to the Pacific.

The picture of the twisting river beat other striking images of Ground Zero in New York, and Palm Island, Dubai, to claim the top spot.