amazing science images you must see

Set against a sherbet sky, these rock formations off the coast of Spain show a prehistoric kind of beauty. Photographer Jose Julian Esteban won a prizefor this shot at the 2011 European Geosciences Union photo contest. The rocks are folded cretaceous calcarenite near Bilbao, Spain.

An immune cell tangles with a protozoan parasite in a life or death struggle. The ribbon like parasite isTrypanosoma brucei, a microscopic menace thatcauses African sleeping sickness. The parasite is transmitted by the bite of the tsetse fly. New research, published June 14, 2012 online by the journal Science, finds that once in the body, this parasite is well adapted to give the immune system the slip. By releasing certain messenger chemicals, the parasite can shut down the anti trypanosome proteins in immune cells.

The alienlike beauty of this image, taken by a camera aboard NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), may seem to portend some Martian artists. Alas,the ridges and ripples are evidence of Martian sand dunes. The brighter features represent two classes of so called aeolian bedforms within Proctor Crater. The ripples, research has shown, are composed of fine sand or fine sand coated with coarser sand and granules. And the larger, darker bedforms are dunes composed of sand, possibly derived from basaltic, or volcanic, rock (and hence the darker color). Ripples tend to move slower than dunes. Because of this, over time, ripples get covered with dust, possibly explaining the bright tone visible here. The image was taken by the MROs High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on Feb. 9, 2009.

Earth takes on beautiful colors in this image created by a Russian weather satellite. The satellite, Elektro L No.1, scans both visible and infrared wavelengthsof light. Combining these images yields the colorful view of Earth seen above.

The Supermoon appears to be sinking into the atmosphere. The image was taken by Andr Kuipers from aboard the ISS on May 5, 2012.

With colors that would make Faberge green with envy, the Cartwheel galaxy stands out against a backdrop of other brightly colored galactic bodies. The Easter egg appearance of this galaxy is due to false colors representing various wavelengths of light ultraviolet in blue, B band visible light in green, infrared in red and x ray radiation in purple. The rings of this galaxy are the aftermath of a collision between the Cartwheel galaxy and another galaxy about 100 million years ago. The first ripple is the blue outer ring, while the yellow orange yolk of the Easter egg is a combination of visible and infrared light from the second ripple. The neon blob and green spiral in the background are two other galaxies, one of which may have been the one that collided with Cartwheel

An iceberg moves slowly through a fjord in Tassilaq, East Greenland, its underwater bulk visible in brilliant blue. This photograph was taken from a helicopter in September, 2011.

Ocean or Van Gogh painting? This NASA image titled Perpetual Ocean shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 throughDecmeber 2007. To see these currents in motion,

These strange circular clouds are no natural phenomenon. They were created by NASA in order to study the circulation in the atmosphere over North America. On March 27, NASA successfully launched five suborbital rockets in order to study the upper level jet stream. Each rocket, launched one after another 80 seconds apart, released a chemical tracer to create these milky clouds at the very edge of space, 65 miles (105 km) up.

Welcome to my ice crevasse. Two divers meet an unexpected surprise in the frigid waters of Palmer Land on the Antarctica Peninsula during a 1962 1963 expedition. Their encounter was with a Weddell Seal (Leptonychotes weddellii), a deep diver that favors a coastal ice habitat. These bruisers can tip the scales at up to 1,360 pounds (600 kilograms) and they live farther south than any other mammal on Earth. This vintage photograph was taken in 1962 during an Antarctic survey led by biologist Waldo Schmitt, an honorary research associate at the Smithsonian Institution. A crustacean expert, Schmitt travelled the world on multiple research expeditions. The one to Antarctica would be his last. He died in 1977 at the age of 90.