The Big Picture is featuring beautiful photos of Martian Landscapes shot from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

What’s better than one Slave Leia?  How about two catching some rays.  Kottke came across this photo of Carrie Fisher and her stunt double napping during the Tatooine shoot in Return of the Jedi. Enjoy!  But just know that I’m going to need a moment or two to catch my breath.  [via]

David D’Angelo flies from Denver to Singapore and back with stopovers in Chicago, Los Angeles and Tokyo. I could watch these types of moving photographic summaries all day. [via]

Above is our Sun, “photographed using a special filter which matches the specific shade of red light emitted by hydrogen gas. The image was then inverted to enhance the visibility of the Sun’s chromosphere, giving it the ominus blue glow seen above.”

[via & via]

This is how I often feel in the morning before I’ve had any coffee.  [via]

As shot at Rotture in Portland, OR.  Funny how a light show can make it look like Jedi Knights and Sith Lords are about to get into some shit.  If only any of the most recent Star Wars movies had something this cool looking.

Science rocks.  If I were a school superintendent I would put tables like this all over every school in my district.

Update: In 2003, Wake Forest University students Nazila Alimohammadi and Anna Clark built this picnic table.

The two women students created the sculpture as part of a public art course taught in the fall by David Finn, associate professor of art. Students in the class were paired up and assigned to work with campus organizations in creating works for public display. “We wanted our project to be fun and functional without a lot of emotional or political content,” Clark says. An aspiring dentist, Alimohammadi had taken several chemistry classes and suggested working with that department. They devised their “Periodic Table” concept — a pun of the familiar Periodic Table of Elements configuration — and the department responded enthusiastically. Alimohammadi did the structural steel work and Clark hand-painted the surface tiles. The piece, which was dedicated in an informal picnic ceremony on April 15, is accurate in every detail, right down to the auxiliary lanthanides and actinides tables that constitute the table’s bench.

[via & via]

Indonesia born photographer and illustrator Agan Harahap uses his Photoshop skills to insert pictures of superheroes like Spiderman, Superman, The Flash, Darth Vader (?) and Batman into memorable political and wartime photos from the mid-20th century.  His new project is called “Superhero Photography”  I love the instant alternative history of this, with superheroes helping us win WWII, and how he makes their costumes look old and from that specific time period.  But why not Captain America and Red Skull?  Too obvious? [via here/here]

You can tag people directly in Flickr photos now. [via]

Mars missions from 1960 to present by Bryan Christie Design for IEEE Spectrum’s special report “Why Mars? Why Now?” You can check out a larger version at the IEEE site.  Totally worth it.

[via]

Looks like somebody at mlb.com jumped the gun last night and is probably losing their job right now! As I type this!  This is no Dewey vs. Truman moment, but still.

For anyone interested in the game, Jimmy Rollins of the Philadelphia Phillies had the game-winning hit.  Phillies 5, Dodgers 4.  They’re up 3-1 in their series versus Los Angeles and I’m starting to get that feeling that this Phillies team has a bit of dynasty in them.  I mean, something good was bound to happen for the city at some point, no? (Thx, Ben)

I couldn’t help but think of the terrifying hell-rabbit Frank, from Richard Kelly’s once under-rated now over-rated time travel mindfuck Donnie Darko, when looking at this microscopic picture of aquatic fly larva. 

Frightening, no? 

Anyway, it’s all part of Scientific American’s slideshow of the recent Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.  And if that’s not enough to satiate your appetitie for microphotography (and really, how could it be?) Wired was kind enough to do a 35-year retrospective that will positively make your mind explode on this lazy Monday.

Amazing:

Part of the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Reunion show featured two massive marionettes, the Big Giant, a deep-sea diver, and his niece, the Little Giantess. The storyline of the performance has the two separated by a wall, thrown up by “land and sea monsters”. The Big Giant has just returned from a long and difficult – but successful – expedition to destroy the wall, and now the two are walking the streets of Berlin, seeking each other after many years apart.