We’re falling in love with the crisp autumn air and with your favorite posts of the month. While diatoms and daphnia might be considered common, we don’t see anything common about these beautiful microscope images!
Diatoms are essentially tiny glass ornaments, which means they tend to produce chromatic aberrations themselves. These aberrations can be corrected with the proper objective lenses. This stunning image is of a Klaus Kemp diatom arrangement. To capture the diatoms with such detail, @macro__cosmos used Z-stacking as well as oblique illumination generated with the trinocular port dust cap partially covering the light port. We love seeing creative microscopy!
Image courtesy of @macro__cosmos. Captured with an Olympus UAPON-340 40X objective on an Olympus CX23 microscope.
Fall is in the air, and with the changing of the leaves comes the arrival of all things pumpkin! This image shows the pollen grains of a pumpkin flower. Pumpkin flowers are not self-pollinating and require assistance from bees or human-induced pollination to improve the quality of the fruit. Without this help, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy our pumpkin spice lattes!
Image courtesy of Johann Swanepoel. Captured using an Olympus BX53 microscope.
What’s cooler than an image of a radiolarian? An image of a lot of them! These spiky samples were picked up from calcareous rock collected in the Kanto region of Japan.
Image courtesy of @co_micro. Captured on an Olympus BH2 microscope.
While some trees are already shedding their leaves, willows in your neighborhood may hold on to theirs for a while longer! They are among the earliest woody plants to grow leaves in the spring and the last to drop their leaves in autumn. These beautiful images show various views of a cross-section of a woody willow branch.
Image courtesy of @universe.in.microns. Captured using an Olympus BH2 microscope.
Daphnia pulex is the most common species of water flea. They can be found in a wide range of aquatic habitats, although they are most often connected to small, shaded pools. This pair was discovered in a pond at Bushy Park (located in Dublin, Ireland) and are seen here magnified 100x in the focus stack panorama.
Image courtesy of Karl Gaff. Captured using an Olympus BX51 microscope.
Did you know you can find tardigrades (water bears) in moss? See how to find them in this quick video taken by Adolfo Sánchez-Blanco.
Adolfo commented, "Water bears are famous for being amazingly resistant to all sorts of extreme conditions. People often refer to them as immortal, but they are mortal like any other animal. However, when the environmental conditions are adverse, they enter into a state of suspended animation called cryptobiosis. It is when they enter into cryptobiosis that they can withstand the incredibly harsh conditions that give them the reputation of being immortal."
If you try this and find some water bears, let us know!
Video and caption courtesy of @dr.bio4ever. Captured using an Olympus CX31 microscope.
To see more images like these, be sure to follow us on Instagram at @olympuslifescience!
Interested in sharing your own images? Visit our image submission site! Plus, don't forget to enter your best light microscopy images into our Image of the Year (IOTY) 2022 contest.
Related Content
A Growing Art—Meet the IOTY 2021 Americas Regional Winner
Plankton to Plants—Our Most Popular Microscope Images for August 2022
Old, New, Borrowed, Blue—Our Most Popular Microscope Images for July 2022
