Showcase of Splendor
Captivating Images of Natural and Human-Created Wonders
This galactic showcase of splendor, featuring the Bahá’í Faith, our home planet, its environs and inhabitants, and our universe at (very) large is brought to you courtesy of our friends here in the U.S. and abroad, friends of friends, civil servants (e.g., NASA, NOAA), and even several friends in the making (with whom we have not yet become acquainted). Enjoy! (Click on images to expand them.) And, if you’d like to submit your own favorite images of splendiferousness for display here, please Contact us.
The Bahá’í Faith
From the Official Website of the Worldwide Bahá’í Community1:
“Throughout history, God has sent to humanity a series of divine Educators—known as Manifestations of God—whose teachings have provided the basis for the advancement of civilization. These Manifestations have included Abraham, Krishna, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Muḥammad. Bahá’u’lláh, the latest of these Messengers, explained that the religions of the world come from the same Source and are in essence successive chapters of one religion from God.
“Bahá’ís believe the crucial need facing humanity is to find a unifying vision of the future of society and of the nature and purpose of life. Such a vision unfolds in the writings of Bahá’u’lláh.”
Also, please see the site of the Bahá’ís of the United States.
The Earth
Our friends’ photographs and artwork displayed here show the beauty of the Earth in all of its unabashed splendor.
Image credit: Marcy L. Stein, Seattle, Washington, USA, 2024
Image credit: Marcy L. Stein, Seattle, Washington, USA, 2024
Image credit: National Park Service (public domain), 2017
Contributed by: Bill Meessen, Bellevue, Washington, USA
Image credit: Rusty Moore, Twisp, Washington, USA, 2014
Image credit: Rusty Moore, Twisp, Washington, USA, 2014
Image credit: NASA, August 2014
Image credit: Marcy L. Stein, Seattle, Washington, USA, 2024
Image credit: National Park Service (public domain), 2007
Contributed by: Bill Meessen, Bellevue, Washington, USA
Image credit: Rusty Moore, Twisp, Washington, USA, 2014
Image credit: Rusty Moore, Twisp, Washington, USA, 2014
Image credit: J. Stillman, 2014
showing Lake Washington, Mercer Island and Lake Sammamish
Image credit: NASA, June 2008
Image credit: National Park Service (public domain), 2011
Contributed by: Bill Meessen, Bellevue, Washington, USA
The Fauna and Flora (Some Wild and Some Semi-Wild)
Every now and then the incomparable wildlife of our home planet “cooperate” long enough to have a revealing picture taken of themselves in their “natural environment” (even if that happens to be in our own backyards).
Image credit: National Park Service (public domain), 2009
Contributed by: Abby Adams, Twisp, Washington, USA
Image credit: Marcy L. Stein, Seattle, Washington, USA, 2024
Image credit: Abby Adams, Twisp, Washington, USA, 2018
Artwork credit: Elisabeth C M Wasiri, Bonn, Germany, February 2025
“Who, me — play with The Mystic Weasels?!”
Image credit: WKM, Bellevue, Washington, USA, January 2025
Image credit: Marcy L. Stein, Seattle, Washington, USA, 2024
Image credit: Marcy L. Stein, Seattle, Washington, USA, 2024
Image credit: [pending}
Contributed by: Elisabeth C M Wasiri, Bonn, Germany, 2024
Artwork credit: Alfred Dominzer, Inc., Long Island City, NY (circa 1972)
Contributed by: Bill Meessen, Bellevue, Washington, USA
“We’d rather be feasting on The Elsewhen Guardinias!”
Image credit: WKM, Bellevue, Washington, USA, January 2025
“Did someone say there are snacks…?!”
Image credit: WKM, Bellevue, Washington, USA, June 2025
Photo Phantasmagoria (Can You Grok It?)
These images are left to your imagination to determine what they are all about! (See each image’s footnote for a hint…)
Image credit: Joel Wolk, Bolingbrook, Illinois, USA, 20xx
Image credit: Bill Meessen, Bellevue, Washington, USA, 2025
Image credit: NASA/ISS
The Universe (Our Local Heavens and Beyond)
Some of our friends have the rare talent of being able to capture celestial phenomena in all their glory.
Image credit: Glenn Nelson, Santa Cruz, California, USA, 2024
Image credit: NASA, February 1984
Image credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL Team, July 4, 2020
Image credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: R.G. French (Wellesley College), J. Cuzzi (NASA/Ames), L. Dones (SwRI), and J. Lissauer (NASA/Ames)
Image credit: Glenn Nelson, Santa Cruz, California, USA, 2024
Image credit: NASA, ESA, Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (JPL), the WFPC2 science team
Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Martel, January 20238
Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team
Gallery of Esteemed Contributors
- Images copyright ©️Bahá’í International Community ↩︎
- This lone thunderhead quickly blew up just at sunset after a day of monsoonal showers
Image ID: con00020, NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) Collection;
Location: Arizona, Williamson valley;
Photo Date: 2014 August; Photographer: Jeff Stillman;
Credit: NOAA Weather in Focus Photo Contest 2015, CC BY 2.0 ↩︎ - This image was taken through a fisheye lens during the “leaner months” (winter) in the American Midwest. ↩︎
- As the contributor stated, “I don’t know what I did to create these ‘pearls of light,’ but somehow the image reminds me of abstract impressionism.” ↩︎
- “Thin Wafers of Water Ice (Oct. 22-23, 2024) — Where space science meets art! Using a blank, white laptop display as the illuminator, a polarizing filter, and the International Space Station’s freezer, which sits at -140 degrees F (-95 C), NASA astronaut and Expedition 72 Flight Engineer Don Pettit grew thin wafers of water ice in microgravity. What results is colorful, fragmented ice crystals.” ↩︎
- This use of the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) in early 1984 was the first time that a human being had taken an untethered spacewalk ↩︎
- “This Hubble telescope snapshot of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula, reveals that the object has an hourglass shape with an intricate pattern of etchings in its walls. A planetary nebula is the glowing relic of a dying, Sun-like star.” ↩︎
- “A crowded field of galaxies throngs this Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, along with bright stars crowned with Webb’s signature six-pointed diffraction spikes. The large spiral galaxy at the base of this image is accompanied by a profusion of smaller, more distant galaxies which range from fully-fledged spirals to mere bright smudges. Named LEDA 2046648, it is situated a little over a billion light-years from Earth, in the constellation Hercules.” ↩︎
