18 Of The Most Powerful Science Photos From This Month

Here are the most moving, spectacular, and beautiful photos of science and nature from September.

By
Kelly Oakes
by Kelly Oakes

BuzzFeed Staff, UK

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The first pictures of a pair of baby red panda twins called Bert and Ernie, born at Whipsnade Zoo in June this year, were released this September.

NASA/JHUAP/SwRI Edit

After its closest approach to the dwarf planet, the New Horizons spacecraft turned around towards the sun and snapped this photo of sunset on Pluto.

ESA and the Planck Collaboration / Via esa.int

The Magellanic Clouds, as seen by the Planck satellite. This image is made from Planck data in the microwave and sub-milimetre range at wavelengths 1000 to 10,000 times longer than visible light, as well as magnetic field data.


ESA / esa.int

An algal bloom in the middle of the Baltic Sea, viewed by Earth observation satellite Sentinel-2.

ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO / Via esa.int

The south pole of Mars and its ice cap, photographed by the Mars Express spacecraft.

Stefan Heunis / AFP / Getty Images

Professor Lee Berger kisses a replica skull of Homo naledi, a newly discovered human ancestor that was unveiled in September.

ESA/Royal Observatory of Belgium / Via esa.int

A solar eclipse as seen from the Proba-2 sun-watching satellite.

Anthony Devlin / PA Wire/PA Images

A conservator checks out Dippy the diplodocus at the Natural History Museum, London, as preparations begin for the dinosaur's nationwide tour in 2018.

Matt Cardy / Getty Images

September saw a supermoon and lunar eclipse combo. A "supermoon" is the combination of the moon being at its closest point to Earth and being full, and a lunar eclipse happens when Earth's shadow falls over the face of the moon. The combination of lunar events won't happen again until 2033.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Scientists found strong evidence for water on today's Mars. The evidence came in the form of salts left behind by the trickle of flowing salt water down slopes. The salts are present in the dark streaks you can see in this image of the Horowitz Crater.

NASA / Via nasa.gov

Small islands in the Bahamas and tidal channels between them, as photographed by an astronaut on the International Space Station.

Nicole Miller-Struttmann / Via Nature

A bumblebee foraging on flowers in a Colorado alpine meadow. A study published this month in Science linked climate-related changes to flower populations to a decrease in the length of alpine bumble bee tongues.

ESA/Hubble & NASA and the LEGUS Team, Acknowledgement: R. Gendler / Via nasa.gov

Messier 96, a spiral galaxy just over 35 million light-years away, is about the same size and mass as our own galaxy, the Milky Way. This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of it.

© The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London

This is part of a giant squid called Archie that was caught off the coast of the Falkland Islands in March 2004. She is now on display in the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum, London, and BuzzFeed's own Hayley Campbell went to meet her this month.

Thomas Crowther / Via Nature

A study published in Nature at the beginning of the month found that there are a grand total of three trillion trees in the world. The authors estimate that the number of trees on Earth has fallen 46% since the beginning of human civilisation.

Zulkarnain Ginting/Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

Mount Sinabung, in Indonesia, spews volcanic ash, smoke and rock into the sky.

Make It Kenya / Anna McGovern / Via discoverafrica.com

The end of the September brings the annual wildebeest migration in the Masai Mara, Kenya. This year the event is being livestreamed – watch it until 5 October.

NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team / Via esa.int

A section of the Veil nebula.


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