Russian retro space matchbox

 « In space, nobody can hear you scream. Nor can they give you a light if you need one, so Russian cosmonauts always had their matches with them, just in case they met a papierosy-puffing alien.»
– Nick Sweeney

2 January 1959: USSR launches Mechta (Luna 1) for 1st lunar fly-by, 1st solar orbit

3 November 1957: USSR launch Laika the dog into space aboard Sputnik II

4 October 1957: launch of Sputnik 1

4 October 1957: launch of Sputnik 1

Source: Jane McDevitt’s search (flickr)

Jane McDevitt’s albums (flickr)

Matchbox vintage Google images

Close staking

Too Close to Understand © Thomas Hawk

Brian Valentine sure knows how to deal with macrophotography flower. Let’s click his is flickr photostream or my search. Welcome to the voluptuous tininess, the world that we don’t usually see.

Alstroemeria anthers {here}

Begonia flower (female) #3 {here}

Crocus anther #3 {here}

Cymbidium orchid #1 {here}

Daffodil bits #9 {here}

Euphorbia flower pollen anther 10x #2 {here}

Fuchsia #3 {here}

Gladiolus #4 {here}

Hebe flowers #2 {here}

Hibiscus stigma {here}

Rhododendron macabeanum anthers {here}

Tulip playtime #4 {here}

Understanding focus staking: Macro Flower Photography: A Tutorial in Focus Stacking by Harold Davis

We Don’t See the World As It Is
Beau Lotto on Perception and Reality

Modern space art

Chesley Bonestell (1888 – 1986) was an American painter, designer and illustrator. His paintings were a major influence on science fiction art and illustration. He helped inspire the American space program. Author of photo-realistic images of distant worlds and spacecraft, Chesley Bonestell was dubbed the "Father of Modern Space Art".

 Assembling the Mars Ships

 Colony on Mars under Plastic Domes

 Crashing the Unknown (1950)

 From The Conquest of Space (1953)

 Fueling Rocket for Blast-off (1956)

 On Mars (1954)

 [Rockets]

 Satellite Orbiting Earth (1956)

 Ships Orbiting Mars (1956)

When Worlds Collide (circa 1964)

In 1932 Chesley Bonestell went to work for Joseph Strauss, chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge. He made perspective drawings of the inner-workings of the bridge and made number of contributions to the final appearance of the structure.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Tapestry, a young Captain Picard is involved in a fight with aliens at the Bonestell Recreation Facility, a spaceport named after the artist.

 Beverages

The Bonestell Recreation Facility is a gaming and food establishment located near Federation Starbase Earhart in the 24th century. The facility features various beverages and other services, including games such as dom-jot. It attracts a wide range of clientele.

 Dom-jot

I often watched Star Trek but not The Next Generation and the Bonestell Recreation Facility was unknown to me. On the web, all the pictures I saw were full of vapor. Did the Bonestell Recreation Facility's consumers smoke cigarettes?

We all have our own talents.

Take a look inside Fabre's Book of Insects. It is a non-fiction book that is a retelling of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos' (1865–1921) translation of autodidact Jean-Henri Fabre's Souvenirs entomologiques. It includes 12 color plates by artist Edward Detmold (1883–1957). The original retelling was published in 1921.

The book talks about insects in real life, mythology and folklore.

 The Sacred Beetle

The Cicada

 

 The Praying Mantis

 The Pelopaeus Spirifex

 The Psyches

 The Spanish Copris

 The White-Faced Decticus

 Common Wasps

 The Field Cricket

 The Sisyphus

 Italian Locusts

The Anthrax Fly

Original illustrations and age toning removed versions by John (the ones presented here) can be found @ old book art dot com.

 

View the complete virtual book here.


It begins like that:
« We all have our own talents, our special gifts. Sometimes these gifts seem to come to us from our forefathers, but more often it is difficult to trace their origin.

A goatherd, perhaps, amuses himself by counting little pebbles and doing sums with them. He becomes an as toundingly quick reckoner, and in the end is a professor of mathematics. Another boy, at an age when most of us care only for play, leaves his schoolfellows at their games and listens to the imaginary sounds of an organ, a secret concert heard by him alone. He has a genius for music. A third, so small, perhaps, that he cannot eat his bread and jam without smearing his face, takes a keen delight in fashioning clay into little figures that are amazingly lifelike. If he be fortunate he will some day be a famous sculptor.»