Virgo Galaxy Gas

Neutral atomic hydrogen data of part of the Virgo galaxy cluster, rendered in different ways. The elongated blobs show the hydrogen contours of the galaxies, while the reflecting surface shows part of the data rendered as a 2D surface displayed according to the brightness at that frequency channel. The idea is to show how different methods of data visualisation affect how we interpret it, both aesthetically and scientifically (part of an extended animation project : https://youtu.be/Rh4Ja4BBOMQ).

Jyoti Rao 

National Centre for Cell Science (India)

SciArt video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k53EACCA6I0

Linked in (Jyoti Rao): linkedin.com/in/jyoti-rao-5227a110

SciArt video on Linked-in: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7071073727437766656/

Microbial Superheroes: Champions of Astrobiology

Our search for life beyond Earth is guided by microbes that have the exceptional capability to survive extreme conditions that are unconducive for most other life on Earth. This artwork features one such ‘microbial superhero’, Deinococcus radiodurans—a bacterium that can withstand radiation 1000s of times the level lethal to humans! A DNA & a protein sequence from this intriguing microbe are presented here as art.

Different shades of red were assigned to the ‘building blocks’ of these two molecules, i.e. the four types of bases that serve as the letters of the DNA alphabet (represented by A, T, G and C), and the nineteen types of amino acids that serve as the letters of the alphabet of this protein (represented by A, G, L, E, V, K, I, D S, T, R, P, Q, M, N, Y, F, C, H). The mosaics displayed here—created using this colour coding scheme—represent the specific order in which 1500 bases and 363 amino acids occur in this microbe’s 16S rRNA gene and RecA protein, respectively. Red alludes to the colour of the carotenoid pigment produced by these bacteria.

These three components of the bacterial cells were selected to be showcased because the 16S rRNA gene sequence serves like a bacterial identification code for this species, while the RecA protein and carotenoid pigment play a crucial role in this microbe's ability to endure extreme environmental conditions—the main factor that makes it a poster child for astrobiology.

Despite only being 24 km in radius - meaning it would fit neatly inside the M25 - this black hole has enough mass to drag its companion star into an egg shape and pull its material into a vast accretion disc. Based on real data (Paice et al. 2019), this illustration shows the scale of the accretion disc, and the fierce jets that fly from its poles.

Swift J1357.2-0933 is a puzzling system - exceedingly faint in X-rays, and also featuring curious dips in the optical that aren't seen at higher frequencies. For a black hole X-ray binary like this, it raised many questions, especially when it was later found that the dips were mainly at red wavelengths, and much weaker at blue wavelengths (Paice et al. 2019). Building on work from Corral-Santana et al. 2013, we postulated that the system has odd vertical extensions in its accretion disc that temporarily occlude the redder inner regions, while failing to sufficiently occlude a diffuse X-ray corona.