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Microscopy Highlights: April and May!

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Reviewing the Top Microscopy Images of the Month(s)

I love these bi-monthly reviews. They help me get a grip on how far I have come and how far I can still go.

I’ll go straight to the point. Here are the best microscopy images, as nominated by me, from my articles of the past two months.

Dual Crystal Delight

This was before my phone stand and focus stacking, and in hindsight, the images don’t hold up as well as they did. You get used to equipment a bit too quickly.

Sample: I reacted Copper Sulfate with Sodium Chloride and left the product solution, Sodium Sulfate and Copper Chloride, out to dry and crystallize.

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An aesthetic, no doubt. The grey-green circles look like boulders, the rectangles like rocks. As if it’s a green forest without trees. Look at the texture, the color, the minute intricacies.
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Look through the Sodium Sulfate crystals, they’re like glass, like ice cubes, transparent and tinted with the color of its brother. Look at the tiny inconsistencies, how they add to the beauty.

Nematodes and Ciliates

My first time observing live samples!

Sample: Drop withdrawn from a culture of dirt-and-water with a grain of rice as a food source.

Nematode

The nematode is one of the more ubiquitous of micro animals. It’s a tiny worm, and it squirms. Hard. My friend calls its movements the nematode rave, and it’s the perfect term.

(Hypotrich) Ciliate

This one looks like a tiny, adorable slug, zooming about

Following Euplotes

Sample: Drop withdrawn from a culture of dirt-and-water with a grain of rice as a food source.

An Euplotes Ciliate is a funny little blobular creature with tiny hairs for legs.

A Dot and A squirming Worm

Sample: Drop withdrawn from a culture of dirt-and-water with a grain of rice as a food source.

Erratic Dot

Best guess: Flagellate or small Ciliate

Copper Sulfate Crystals and Foam (Revisited)

I tried focus stacking my images to achieve a thicker depth of field. The results were spectacular.

Sample: Copper Sulfate (Recrystallized) and packaging foam.

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This is hands down the best result from the focus stacking. The entire layer is in perfect focus. Look at the depth, the slant of the edges, the tiny crystals scattered below, the wonderful blurred background. The clarity, the resolution, the detail; I could stare at this image for hours.
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Gentler, darker, and more somber. The low light is dignified. Look how all layers are in focus, how the details are stark and clear cut. Look at the line cutting across the crystal, the dark band on top, the tiny inconsistencies. Spectacular.
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Bright red and brilliant. The fluttering, wispy nature and the blood-like color always wins my heart. It’s great to see all the layers at once, clear and in focus. Look at the divisions within, like cells, and the tiny debris inside each. What a wonderful and complex structure.

Honorable Mentions

I’m published!

I can’t believe it, but I am. My articles are regularly featured in the amateur microscopy E-magazine Micscape. Recently, they published a paperback Yearbook comprising the microscopy articles from the past five years, and they included one of mine. It was a wonderful experience.

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Micscape Yearbook 3 cover page

Focused and Unfocused: A Beginner’s Comparison of Focus Stacking

In this article, I do a systematic review of focus stacking and compare my focused and unfocused images to gauge the scope of this technique and what I can do with it. It was a fun project.

Image of the Month(s)

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Wow.

As much as I loved water culture microscopy and videography, this image still trumps all of them. Just look at it. Wow.

All image metadata included in their respective articles.

For more wonderful images, feel free to browse my Medium Profile.

While I have you here, and I don’t say this often enough, thank you for being here. It always means a lot.

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