Eideard

Louis Jacques Daguerre’s first surviving daguerreotype image, of a collection of plaster casts on a window ledge, which he produced on a silver plate, in 1837

Louis Daguerre devised the daguerreotype, the first successful form of permanent photography. The French physicist developed the process for transferring photographs onto silver-coated copper plates. His discovery was made by an accident, according to the writer Robert Leggat, who said Daguerre put an exposed plate in a chemical cupboard in 1835 only to later find it have developed a latent image. The daguerreotype process was unveiled at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1839. It became the first commercially successful was of getting permanent images from a camera.

Another delightful photo essay from the pages of The Telegraph.

Click on Guillaume Blanchard’s photo to enlarge

The recently discovered Comet Lovejoy has been captured in stunning photos and time-lapse video taken from ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The comet graced the southern sky after it had unexpectedly survived a close encounter with the Sun…

ESO optician Guillaume Blanchard made a marvellous wide-angle photo of Comet Lovejoy…Blanchard said: “For me this comet is a Christmas present to the people who will stay at Paranal over Christmas”.

This bright comet was also seen from the International Space Station in another stunning time-lapse sequence on 21 December as the crew filmed lightning on the Earth’s night side.

Comet Lovejoy has been the talk of the astronomy community over the past few weeks. It was discovered on 27 November by the Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy and was classified as a Kreutz sungrazer, with its orbit taking it very close to the Sun. Just last week, the comet entered the Sun’s corona, a much-anticipated event, passing a mere 140 000 kilometres from the Sun’s surface. A close shave indeed…

The comet was expected to break up and vaporise, but instead it survived its steaming hot encounter with the Sun and re-emerged a few days later, much to everyone’s surprise. It is now visible from the southern hemisphere, appearing at dawn, and features a bright tail millions of kilometres long, composed of dust particles that are being blown ahead of the comet by the solar wind.

Some of the earliest recorded space phenomenon are comets. Ignorant primitives regard[ed] them as omens, demons, messengers from some invisible dude in the sky.

I’m pretty well satisfied simply appreciating their beauty, their history, their passage from birth to death.

- but still my favorite.

The black and white image, taken by London based photographer Peter Denness, shows a summer hare in a field in Suffolk.

Online magazine Wildlife Extra named the portrait as the winner of its UK Wildlife Photography Competition 2011.

Bravo!

Members of the US army’s 502nd Regiment fire a mortar during 2010′s Operation Hamkari in Kandahar, Afghanistan. This image is part of a winning portfolio for the army photographic competition 2011.

Bravo.

95% of the time I take for walks about Lot 4 and the bosque of the Santa Fe River, I have my pocket camera with me. So, of course, two of the most unusual residents of the neighborhood I’ve seen this year – I’ve encountered when I’ve forgotten to put the camera in my pocket. They are:

Velvet Ant

Velvet ants are striking wasps covered with red and black or orange and black “hairs”. Females are wingless; males have two pairs of black wings. The female have very long stingers, the potency of the punch is reflected in the common name “cow killer wasps”. I have read that you will remember if you step on one barefoot.

Solitary Miner Bee

The few I’ve seen are striking black-and-white. I had one sitting on my knee the other day – and no camera to take a photo. And I haven’t found a decent photo of one in New Mexico though there are a hundred varieties of solitary miner bees in the state. I think few are black-and-white. Mine was 3 large bands, white-black-white.

Autumn is rolling right along; so, it may take me till next year to get a picture of either one.

Once thought to be the deepest cave in the world, the Gouffre Berger cave system in France is still one of the most popular destinations for cavers who want to test their skills hundreds of metres beneath the earth’s surface. Pioneered by French cavers in the 1950s, the Gouffre Berger – named after Joseph Berger who was one of the men to uncover it – was the first cave to be explored at depth of more than 1000 metres.

Click the link and follow your way through this cave.

The Holy Ghost Panel rock painting in the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park in San Juan, Utah, with the Milky Way in the background

His name is Binay