Colorful Biological Patterns

Close-ups of nature's beauty, featuring vibrant wing patterns of butterflies, oil in water, and crystal formations, all rendered in bright, abstract hues.

Close-up detail wing pattern of tropical butterfly

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Vibrant crystals of salicylic acid observed in detail

$Mandelbulb fractal close-up. Computer-generated image of a three-dimensional analogue derived form a Mandelbrot Set using spherical coordinates.$

$The data captured here is one of the outputs of a September 2023 test conducted at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory of a state-of-the-art imaging spectrometer instrument, which will measure the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide from space. The instrument successfully detected the presence of methane (dark blue line near the top of the rainbow band), a greenhouse gas, in a sample cylinder. The rainbow band shown on a screen here is a measure of the intensity of a spectrum of light. Blue is low intensity and red is high intensity. Designed and built by JPL, imaging spectrometer will be part of an effort led by the nonprofit Carbon Mapper organization to collect data on greenhouse gas point-source emissions. The information will help locate and quantify super-emitters - the small percentage of individual sources responsible for a significant fraction of methane and carbon dioxide emissions around the world.$