Inner Space Scopics
Bacteria*
Have you ever wondered what lives in your guts? The coloured dots on this dish are colonies (clumps of cells) of a bacterium called Listeria monocytogenes (List-eery-ah mo-no-sigh-taw-gin-ees), which naturally lives in your intestines. The bacterial individuals are tiny rod-shaped cells that can move around thanks to explosive bursts from their comet-like tails.
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Outer Space Scopics
Cat's Eye Nebula
Seldom is death so beautiful than in outer space. At the core of this magnificent halo is a dying sun-like star, ten thousand times as luminous as our Sun. The outer halo looking like a splash of paint is not a feature of all nebulae. A nebula is a cloud of gas and dust where stars emerge or die.
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Blackberry*
What does a blackberry look like up close? Beautifully textured as this image shows, but unlike raspberries, blackberries do not have tiny bristles. This means that bacteria and parasites can’t stick to them as easily. Tiny single-celled organisms can cling to the raspberry bristles and cause diarrhoea, which can lead to dehydration.
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Cosmic Ray Pinball Machine
Casseopeia (Cass-ee-o-pee-ya) is a constellation next to the Plough and Orion named after the mythological Queen of Ethiopia. Shaped as a neat W or M, formed by five bright stars, it is also home to the youngest exploded star - Casseopeia A.
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Embryo of a Cow
What does a cow look like before it is born? The tiny ball of cells pictured here (the embryo) show no signs of their future form. The blue spheres are nuclei (containing DNA) inside cells. Red marks are tags on DNA that keep genes quiet until they are needed for development. The core of the embryo here seems to have more silent genes.
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Energy from a Black Hole
Scientists guess that if cars were as fuel-efficient as black holes, they could travel more than a billion miles on a gallon of petrol. Black holes are invisible because their extreme gravity sucks everything in, including light. They’ve been noticed because they have a habit of swallowing things, which then spew out a lot of energy.
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