Kuroshio is a north flowing warm ocean current found in the Black Sea, near Japan and Vietnam. The warm waters of the Kuroshio Current sustain the coral reefs of Japan, the northernmost coral reefs in the world which house a variety of reef dwelling fauna and is considered a high productivity reef. With stable temperatures…

Fra Mauro is the last vestiges of a lunar plain on Earth’s moon, visible on the southern hemisphere of the light side of the moon. The lunar plain is pocked with more recent crater impacts and would have hosted the ill-fated Apollo 13 lunar landing had the mission proceeded as planned. The mission was aborted…

A hurricane is a rapidly rotating storm center characterized by rotation, low pressure, strong winds, and heavy rain. They are typically formed over warm bodies of water through evaporation of the ocean’s surface water, recondensing into clouds, and fueled by horizontal temperature contrasts. Their rotation is the result of the conservation of angular momentum derived…

The pursuit of knowledge of the nearest planet Mars has been underway since man first discovered the planet above us.  The theory of water of Mars was first posited by Renaissance astronomers upon being able to view the polar ice caps for the first time.  Mariner 9 and Viking Orbiter images, showed a network of…

Stachybotrys chartarum,  is a mold that is sometimes found in soil and grain, but the mold is most often detected in cellulose-rich building materials from damp or water-damaged buildings.   It requires high moisture content in order to grow and is associated with wet gypsum material and wallpaper.  This piece shows the beauty that can…

The sine wave is a mathematical curve that describes a smooth repetitive oscillation, typically referring to a soundwave. It is named after the function sine, similar to cosine and tangent from previous trigonometry courses you may remember.  It occurs often in pure and applied mathematics, as well as physics, engineering, signal processing and now, in…

Suva is the capital and the second most populated municipality of Fiji. It is on the southeast coast of the island of Viti Levu, in the Rewa Province, Central Division. It is the largest and the most cosmopolitan city in the South Pacific and has become an important regional center. This rich blue painting was…

Large Martian craters (greater than 60 km in diameter) are named after famous scientists and science fiction authors; smaller ones (less than 60 km in diameter) get their names from towns on Earth.  The Aban crater of Mars was given it’s name after the Russian city of the same name; spanning 4.1 km across and…

Unmistakable and forever above us, this piece reflects the heavenly body closest to Earth; the moon.  Dotted with crater impacts created by a technique of spot paint removal and ghostly shadows present a close view of the moon above us.

Sodium is a chemical element with symbol Na  and atomic number 11, most commonly found as NaCl, sodium chloride, or as it’s commonly called – table salt.  As a metal, sodium is a soft, silver-white, highly reactive metal which burns an intense yellow under flame. In the Periodic table it is in column 1 (alkali…

Calebasse Lake, just one of many bodies of water found in the delta region of the Mississippi River in Louisiana.  The delta itself, one of fanastic historical importance throughout the years, discharges an estimated 400 million metric tons of sediment from the interior United States outward to the Gulf of Mexico.  This piece follows the…

The word mica is derived from the Latin word mica, meaning a crumb, and probably influenced by micare, to glitter.  The earliest use of mica has been found in cave paintings created roughly 40,000 BC to 10,000 BC.  Throughout history, mica was primarily used for artwork: to add a splash of color and reflectivity to…