February Gallery

Voyager 1 photo of Jupiter

Jupiter. Voyager 1 spacecraft photograph of the planet Jupiter. The picture was taken on 17 January 1979 from a distance of 47 million kilometres (29 million miles)

© NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Astronomy, Cosmology, Jupiter, Planet, Planetary, Science, Voyager 1 Image, Voyager Imagery

Nerve synapse

Synapse. Illustration of a synaptic knob (at left), the junction between two nerve cells. When an electrical impulse reaches the synapse, vesicles (round blue shapes, lower left) burst through the cell membrane (exocytosis). They then release chemicals called neurotransmitters (red spheres). These cross the synaptic cleft, the gap between the two cells. When they reach the receptor cell they will bind to the cell. There they will trigger an electrical impulse in the receptor cell. Information is transmitted along the nervous system in this manner. The green, cigar-shaped structures are mitochondria, the sites of energy production within the cell

© JOHN BAVOSI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY