Wellcome Image Awards 2008

From the website: Selected by a team of expert judges from recent acquisitions by Wellcome Images, the winning pictures show a wide variety of subjects, normally invisible to the naked eye, revealing new layers of complexity and making the ordinary extraordinary.

View the Award-winning images in the online gallery or in person, listen to interviews with their creators and find out how they were made. You may also like to vote online for your favourite image, or submit your images for a chance to win at next year's Awards.

Throughout history scientists have presented their findings in fascinating pictures - Hooke's 'Micrographia' for example. We present some of the latest of these offerings, astounding not only to the non-specialist, but also to those who produce these images as part of daily research and investigation.

These images have been captured using both traditional and cutting-edge imaging techniques, from the simple light microscope to the latest in computer-aided imaging. We can only look forward to the future when new advances will make possible even more astonishing pictures.

Photo: A fly on sugar crystals. Colour-enhanced image of a housefly (Musca domestica) on sugar crystals. To eat the sugar the fly releases its enzyme-containing saliva onto it, lets it digest, then sucks it all back up. Houseflies are well known for carrying gastrointestinal diseases such as Salmonella and dysentery, but they can also spread tuberculosis, anthrax and other major illnesses through their habit of visiting decaying organic matter and faeces, as well as humans and their food. Colour-enhanced scanning electron micrograph by Dave McCarthy and Annie Cavanagh.