Images Dated 18th November 2004

Yeti

Yeti. This mythical primate is said to live in the impenetrable thickets of the highest Himalayan forests. The earliest British report of a yeti was made in 1832 by the naturalist B. H. Hobson. He wrote about an apelike creature described to him by the Sherpas. In the 1920s, an international mania for mountaineering in the unknown peaks of the Himalayas led to more reports in the western press of the Yeti and resulted in the phrase Abominable Snowman'. The first photograph of a Yeti footprint was taken in 1937 but proved inconclusive. Despite numerous sightings, it is still not known if the Yeti is myth or reality

© CHRISTIAN DARKIN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

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