NSF Visualization Challenge winners announced

The winners of the annual NSF Visualization challenge have been announced today. The beautiful visualizations can be seen at 

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/index.jsp?id=win2008

New Scientist has a wonderful gallery that they have created which can be found at 

http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn14805-science-visualised

I think my favorite photograph is the Squid Suckers. Its both beautiful and scary at the same time. 

I thought the Human Circulatory system illustration was really beautiful. It provides such a wonderful focus+context style visualization. A larger version of that visualization can be found here. 

More details regarding the challenge can be found at http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/index.jsp?id=challenge

The visualizations reminded me of the wonderful Capstone talk that Pat Hanrahan had given at the IEEE Visualization 2004 conference on Self Illustrating Phenomena. I strongly believe that visualization should be self-illustrating and self-explanatory. It should not require lengthy explanations and should provide insight and increased understanding. If you see any such self explanatory visualizations, feel free to enlist them in the comments section.