Images Dated 18th November 2004

Castle Class 4-6-0 locomotive, No.4094

Castle Class 4-6-0 locomotive, No.4094 Dynevor Castle, hauling the Ocean Liner Express from Plymouth Millbay to Paddington. The three leading vehicles are 70ft Ocean Mails storage vans, although they appear to have been demoted as there is no legend on the lower panels, and they are probably conveying passengers luggage. This view was taken at Sonning Cutting, Maurice Early's favorite location. The bridge in the distance carries the A4

© National Railway Museum / Science & Society Picture Libr

Griffons

Griffons. This mythical creature is half-eagle, half-lion and is believed to have watched over gold mines and hidden treasures. According to Scythian legend, the griffon inhabited the Scythia steppes (an area in Eurasia) where gold and precious stones were abundant. If strangers tried to remove these treasures, griffons would tear them to pieces. Scythians used giant preserved bones found in the area as proof of the existance of griffons and to scare away outsiders. It is now thought that these bones were in fact the fossils of a dinosaur called Protoceratops, which has an anatomy remarkably similar to that of the griffon

© CHRISTIAN DARKIN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Spiral galaxy NGC 7331

Spiral galaxy NGC 7331. Spitzer Space Telescope infrared image of the spiral galaxy NGC 7331. This galaxy lies around 50 million light years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. Notable in this image is the bright yellow ring of star formation around the galaxy's centre. The ring has a radius of 20, 000 light years and is made up of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), with enough material to form about four billion stars of the magnitude of our Sun. The three galaxies below NGC 7331 are about 10 times farther away. Wavelengths of 3.6 microns are coloured blue, 4.5 microns are green, 5.8 microns are yellow and 8.0 micron wavelengths are red

© NASA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY