thisistheverge:

The illusion of simplicity: photographer Peter Belanger on shooting for Apple

You’ve almost certainly never heard of Peter Belanger, but you’ve definitely seen his photographs. In fact, you may even see his work every day, and it’s likely that you own some of his most famous subjects. Belanger is the man behind some of Apple’s most iconic product images, a San Francisco-based product photographer at the top of his field. Apple is but one of his clients — he’s done work for everyone from eBay and Nike to Pixar and Square — and we sat down with Peter to talk about his work, his background, and some very, very expensive gear.

ikenbot:

Sunspots

This was imaged with my Astro-Physics 152mm and DayStar Quantum PE .5 Angstrom filter and Flea2 video ccd camera. These images were taken 1 hour a part. — Randy Shivak

Sunspots are temporary phenomena on the photosphere of the Sun that appear visibly as dark spots compared to surrounding regions. They are caused by intense magnetic activity, which inhibits convection by an effect comparable to the eddy current brake, forming areas of reduced surface temperature. They usually appear as pairs, with each sunspot having the opposite magnetic pole than the other. [**]

How the Hubble Space Telescope Works

In 1946, an astrophysicist named Dr. Lyman Spitzer Jr. proposed that a telescope in space would reveal much clearer images of distant objects than any ground-based telescope. That sounds logical, right? But this was an outrageous idea, considering no one had even launched a rocket into outer space yet.

­As the U.­S. space program matured in the 1960s and 1970s, Spitzer lobbied NASA and Congress to develop a space telescope. In 1975, the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA began drafting the initial plans for it, and in 1977, Congress approved the necessary funds. NASA named Lockheed Missiles (now Lockheed Martin) as the contractor that would build the telescope and its supporting systems, as well as assemble and test it.

The famous telescope was named after U.S. astronomer Edwin Hubble, whose observations of variable stars in distant galaxies confirmed that the universe was expanding and gave support to the Big Bang theory.

After a long delay due to the Challenger disaster in 1986, the Hubble Space Telescope shot into orbit on April 24, 1990, piggybacking aboard the Discovery space shuttle. Since its launch, Hubble has reshaped our v­iew of space, with scientists writing thousands of papers based on the telescope’s clear-eyed findings on important stuff like the age of the universe, gigantic ­black holes or what­ stars look like in the throes of death.

­Keep reading to learn how Hubble has documented outer space and the instruments that have allowed it to do so, plus a few of the problems the venerable telescope/spacecraft has encountered along the way.

NASA is throwing Hubble a birthday party, and as part of the celebration, they had astronomers image the Horsehead Nebula with a new, infrared light. Learn more in their news release. The other two images are personal favorites from Hubble’s portfolio; starburst galaxy J082354.96 and the colliding spiral galaxies of Arp 274.

discovery:

Take a look at 10 Treats of Summer Astronomy and learn more, here - http://bit.ly/Z8hE7O

thekhooll:

Cloud City

German photographer Sebastian Opitz has captured a clouded aerial views of Dubai’s cityscape. Accurately titled “Cloud City”

(via stufftoblowyourmind)

eupraxsophy:

Close-up photographs of insect wings. See more here. It’s hard to imagine that there is this much beauty in tiny animals most of us regard as nothing more than pests. Nature is as much a work of art as anything humans could come up with. 

(via thescienceofreality)