The ability to capture extremely detailed panoramic views made up of hundreds of perfectly stitched individual photos is tremendously useful for scientists studying everything from rock outcrops to birds to microscopic organisms. The creators of the GigaPan robot, which can automatically create zoomable gigapixel-scale images, announced eight winners of a science photography contest Nov. 11 at the Fine International Conference on Gigapixel Imaging for Science. “Having access to such high-resolution images changes scientists’ relationships to images and the information they contain,” said Carnegie Mellon University robotics scientist Illah Nourbaksh, one of GigaPan’s inventors and an organizer of conference. Created in 2006 by Carnegie Mellon and NASA, the GigaPan robotic camera mount can shoot hundreds of perfectly aligned images using almost any digital camera. After the photographer uploads the photos to a computer, photo-stitching software seamlessly merges them into a single, highly zoomable image. Since 2007, Nourbaksh and others have trained 120 scientists to use the system. “There are 8,000 GigaPans out there just by scientists, and that’s growing every day as more of them use it,” Nourbaksh said. From microbes on a barnacle to a landscape coated with penguins, explore the winning scientist-photographer entries, plus a sneak preview of zoomable, gigapixel-size, time-lapse videos. Above: Petroglyph Cliff The Eagle’s Nest cliff face near Jubbah in northern Saudi Arabia is covered with ancient petroglyphs. The Saudi government is extremely protective of the site, Nourbaksh said, but allowed renowned photographer Richard T. Bryant to capture the scene in a 3.3-gigabyte, 1.11-gigapixel panorama made of 176 individual photos. “The prince of Saudi Arabia agreed to let him in and photograph the rock etchings. Now any scientist can look at this site in extreme detail,” Nourbaksh said. Credit: GigaPan/Richard T. Bryant

Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds Don’t let the 40 or so hummingbirds in this panorama fool you. There are really only two. Photographer Chris Fastie called it a “perplexing distortion of reality.” He took 78 photos over the course of a few minutes, then selectively merged them to capture multiple feeding and flying positions of the birds. “Rarely will the local male allow birds other than his mate to use a food source in his territory, so a feeding flock like this is impossible,” Fastie wrote on GigaPan.org. Credit: GigaPan/Chris Fastie

Barnacle on Crab A GigaPan-rigged scanning electron microscope made this image of a barnacle attached to a crab shell from a California beach. Diatoms, shell damage and other peculiarities pop out in the image, shot at 800x zoom power and made up of 384 individual scans. “When you scan the whole animal like that, it becomes an entire encyclopedia of information about that animal,” Nourbaksh said. “It’s crazy.” Credit: GigaPan/Molly Gibson

Insect Collection To share its well-tended yet extremely fragile insect collections with the world, the North Carolina State University Insect Museum is digitizing its archives with GigaPan. In this shot, the four most-diverse orders of insects (which make up about 800,000 species) are represented. Clockwise from the top right: Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies), Coleoptera (beetles and weevils), Diptera (flies) and Hymenoptera (wasps, bees and ants). Credit: GigaPan/North Carolina State University Insect Museum

Adélie Penguin Colony Stephanie Jenouvier, a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, shot this 1.39-gigapixel panorama of an Antarctic Adélie penguin colony. Tucked away in the image are surveying researchers, hungry birds and countless waddling penguins. The colony spreads across Cape Crozier, one of the easternmost tips of Ross Island in Antarctica, a location many scientists call home for months at a time. Jenouvier "has really gone in and captured how we do research in Antarctic with her images,” Nourbaksh said. “They’re always great portraits of science and culture.” Credit: GigaPan/Stephanie Jenouvier

Diseased Honeybee Colony At a quarantined bee yard, Pennsylvania State University entomologist Dennis vanEngelsdorp studies colony collapse disorder and the bee diseases thought to cause it. This panorama of a struggling comb reveals dangers such as Chalkbrood fungus, Sacbrood virus infections. and even invading bees. Also seen are bees in various stages of development, glistening pots of nectar and stashes of yellow “bee bread,” the wads of protein-packed pollen that bees eat for food. Such imagery provides “a unique and interactive tool by which bee biology and brood-disease identification could be delivered,” vanEngelsdorp wrote on GigaPan.org. Credit: GigaPan/Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Mike Andree

El Medio Just south of New Mexico and the U.S. border, efforts are underway to halt cattle grazing and return the Sierra de en Medio mountain range to its natural state. Among the highlights in this 360-degree panorama by Rurik List are wildflowers, stray cows, flocks of bighorn sheep, agave plants and recovering grassland. Credit: GigaPan/Rurik List

Bait Ball When this school of Salema fish, also called “dream fish” for their hallucinogenic toxins, swam toward photographer Jason Buccheim, he quickly snapped 10 photos to create this wrap-around panorama (in addition to one from inside the school). Such schools of fish are often called “bait balls,” because dolphins, tuna and other fast ocean predators will simultaneously attack the fish from many directions, keeping them from escaping. “Underwater gigapanography is one direction we’re really interested in pursuing,” Nourbaksh said. “Just imagine doing them on a coral reef over and over. It would be a dream to be able to show a detailed time-lapse of reef bleaching.” Credit: GigaPan/Jason Buccheim