Whale song art
These images may look like just pretty patterns, but they are visual representations of songs sung by whales and dolphins. Recorded by American engineer Mark Fischer the sounds were transformed into visuals using a mathematical tool called 'wavelets'. Mark, who used to work on US Navy sonar and software for defence and aerospace companies, records the underwater conversations between whales and dolphins and transforms the waves into art. "With wavelets, there was an image that displayed extraordinary structure. Something was going on with this sound, even if we are not quite sure what," he says. The effect is even more apparent when colour is applied and the graph transformed from rectangular to polar coordinates, forming a circular graph.

Hottest star in the galaxy
The dying star at the centre of the Bug Nebula is 35 times hotter than the sun with a surface temperature of 200,000 degrees. This is the first time the star has been pictured despite numerous attempts by stargazers across the world.

World’s Smallest Orchid found by accident
Botanists who have just discovered a new flower in Ecuador can be forgiven for having missed it until now. The world's smallest orchid (from the Platystele genus) is just 2.1mm wide, with transparent petals that are just one cell thick. American scientist Lou Jost found the tiny flower by accident among the roots of a larger plant that he had collected from the Cerro Candelaria reserve in the eastern Andes. It is the 60th new orchid that Dr Jost has discovered in the past decade. "It is an exciting feeling to find a new species," he said. "People think everything has been discovered but there's much more."