Greenland glaciers threatened by melting, one of Saturn's moons caught between the rings of the planet and an artificial 3D printed lung: they are among the most beautiful scientific images of 2019 selected by the magazine Science among those published on the site during the year.
The breathtaking photo gallery opens with a huge cyclone on the Pacific Ocean, captured by photographer and pilot Santiago Borja. In the image we see the whirlwind of white clouds standing out against the starry sky. From the atmosphere to the ice, in the photo depicting a US Army engineer, peering through a skylight that Greenland opened on the Helheim glacier, where an American expedition is collecting data to monitor the melting of ice.
Nature is also the protagonist of the shot that captured a male humpback whale fighting with another male off the coast of Tonga, in the Pacific Ocean. Another photo captures the unmistakable red-colored salmon ready to spawn in Alaska's Iliamna Lake, near a University of Washington research station where researchers study the migration of these fish. Moving on to space, the photo of the moon Daphne among the rings of Saturn is spectacular, photographed by the Cassini probe born from the collaboration between NASA, European Space Agency (ESA) and Italian Space Agency (ASI).
Breathtaking the Milky Way that shines on the antennas of the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder telescope. In the photo gallery there is also a very particular research laboratory: the one in Beijing directed by Gao Caixia, an expert on the technique of cutting and pasting DNA, the Crispr, portrayed among its modified wheat plants. Also celebrated is the technique that allows 3D organs to be printed and that allowed to obtain a pulmonary alveolus. In 3D version also the celebration of the periodic table, which in 1509 is 150 years old.
