Images Dated 24th February 2003

Lichfield Cathedral, BR poster, 1948

Poster produced for British Raiways (BR) to promote rail travel to Lichfield, Staffordshire. The poster shows a view of the exterior of Litchfield Cathedral. Built in the Gothic style from local sandstone in the 12th century, Lichfield Cathedral is unique among English medieval cathedrals in having three spires. The west front is a 19th century reproduction of a 13th-14th century original. Artwork by Claude Buckle (1905-1973), who originally trained as an architect but turned to fine art in 1928. He painted in both oil and watercolour and was a prolific poster artist for GWR as well as BR. Much of his original poster artwork is held at the National Railway Museum

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Artwork of a brown dwarf star

Brown dwarf. Artwork of a planet-like brown dwarf "star" on the edge of a globular cluster of stars, seen from a nearby moon. Brown dwarves may be part of dark matter, the invisible material that makes up about 90% of the universe's mass. Brown dwarves are classed as MACHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects) because they are likely to have formed on the periphery (halo) of a galaxy where material is scarce. A brown dwarf is an object which began to accumulate material like a star but which never collected enough for nuclear reactions to begin in its core. Brown dwarves are difficult to detect because, like a planet, they can only be seen by the light they reflect from nearby stars

© JOE TUCCIARONE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Engraving of English geologist Sir Charles Lyell

Charles Lyell. Engraving of the British geologist Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875). Son of a botanist, Lyell at first embarked on a legal career but his interests in geology led to his appointment as secretary of the Geological Society in 1823. In 1830-33 he published his three-volume masterpiece Principles of Geology. In it he provided proof to support the principle of Uniformitarianism stated by James Hutton. This principle stated that rocks and geological formations are the result of ordinary slow processes such as erosion and not a past catastrophe. A friend of Darwin, Lyell wrote The Antiquity of Man (1863) but himself denied that evolution could be applied to humans

© DR JEREMY BURGESS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY