Why my coriander won't germinate....

My wife loves cilantro (coriander, Chinese parsley).  I gathered as many seeds as I could last year, but absolutely none would germinate.  I decided to cut one apart to see if it looked ok internally, but when I put the seed (approximately 1/8" in diameter) under the microscope I found out why they don't grow.  A large percentage (well over 60%) had holes 0.025" in diameter "drilled" into the shell.  I don't know what the bug looked like, but it was certainly small!

Really small critters

I finally spent the time to replace the rather expensive incandescence bulbs in my Nikon Model M with high intensity LED lamps (using a small desk lamp from Ikia).  The result were better than I expected!  Here is a dark field image of some rotifers that were in a dish filled with rain water in my flower garden.

They are not sharp since they are moving rather rapidly, but all in all they don't look bad!

I have no idea

Just another bug.  The total length of this one was about 12mm.  I am not sure why, but I thought his head and "shoulders" looks almost robot-like.  I guess I have been watching too many sci-fi movies.

Just another bug

This guy was on the window in my garage, so he agreed to a photo shoot (RIP).

I also decided to put him in stereo, so here is the "side" mug shot:

and the same thing in anaglyph.

Lint

That's right, lint--from the clothes dryer!  I guess you could say that lint from the clothes dryer is the cleanest dirt you can find....  Even though it looks like a gray mass, under a microscope it actually is an amazing collection of multicolored fibers and hair.

Click on the image to take a closer look.  In 3D it doesn't have enough resolution to really see it.

Another early spring flower

I keep noticing these small blue flowers which appear to be widespread in the neighborhood.  The flowers are only a few mm in diameter, but under the microscope they look lovely!  As nearly as I can tell they are a type of "Creeping Speedwell".  The images below were taken with my Nikon FS-2 using a new micrometer based system to get better resolution with my focus stacking.  Each of the photos was composed of over 30 individual images merged using Helicon Focus.

The photo above is fairly high resolution (click to enlarge), and the images below are side-by-side parallel 3D, followed by anaglyphs.

Chirp no more.....

I like crickets, but not when they make too much noise.  This guy (gal?) will no longer bother me in the basement.

If you click on the image you should see it full-screen.  If you look closely you can see that he has two protuberances toward the rear of his body (shown below).  I hesitate to ask what they are used for....

A very old bug

I did this just to see if I could.  While at the local Rock and Mineral Show last year I foolishly spent $10 on a piece of amber that looked like it had all kinds of bugs inside.  I finally got around to cutting and polishing a piece and, sure enough, there is a 40,000,000 (more or less) year old mosquito (or some such creature!).  This again is a red/green anaglyph.

From the tip of the tail to the end of the head is about 2.5 mm.

It isn't always what it seems....

I have spent a fair amount of time recently working on my equipment, and I decided that a piece of "rough" limestone was an excellent sample to look at.  Since the BPC had a "share" for "what is it" photos I took the following (shown as a 3D anaglyph).  The width in the top photo is about 1/2 inch.

My dear wife took one look and suggested this as a better "what is it"--I have to agree that she has a good eye!

The limestone is on the right, mixed breakfast cereal on the left.

Escaping Spiders!

Watch out for spiders crawling out of their picture frames!  (you need red/green glasses for this one)

Messing with nature

This is a post I actually wrote last winter, but never got around to publishing.  I am still working on getting some quality snowflake photographs using my latest setup.  It is amazing how ugly most snows are, and this winter there has been almost no snows worth looking at!  Since I didn't have any new snowflake images, I dug out some of my older ones and fired up my Photoshop.  I created the following two snowflakes which were a definite improvement over the original:

Just because nature wants snowflakes to have hexagonal symmetry doesn't mean I have to agree.  And if I can have a five spoked snowflake, why not a seven legged starfish!

For details on how (not why!) this was done in Photoshop, check out my "Just Stuff" link.

A new crop of garage bugs.

I noticed some little white spots on the mints in the garage and looked at them under the microscope.  Since I was able to find an Aphid on the underside of several leaves, I am assuming that the guy below is just a very immature form.  I base this mainly on the similarity with the long antennas that the larger bug shown on the left has.  I guess the snow outside has all the bugs trying to find a home in my garage.  I will have to look for more creatures today.

The aphid on the top is perhaps 1/2 mm long while the transparent looking guy below is about half that.  I wonder how many of these we eat every day?

Zooming in on the moth wing

I'm still looking at the Virgin Tiger Moth wing.  Since I had pretty much torn him (her?) up I decided to take one last look at the wings.  The following four images show the wing at increasingly higher magnification.

If you pull off a few of the scales, this is what they look like:

Crystal photography

One of the things I really wished I had mastered while I was still working was the ability to take decent photomicrographs of the various samples we examined.  Admittedly, it would have been difficult with the air sensitive compounds, but they generally were not terribly photogenic since the were almost nearly always partially decomposed.   I have been playing with some of the mineral samples I have sitting around to see what I can do.  This is a back lighted fragment of an unknown mineral ca. 1 mm maximum size.

I may have to try growing some "perfect" crystals.  The beauty of small crystals (natural or newly grown) is the near perfection of the morphology.

OK, Here's my feather

I guess if you have a microscope you have to look at a feather.  I didn't have anything else for today so I went ahead and took a photo of a feather I found in the back yard.  This is not it is all that spectacular (shot at about 40x) but it is better than nothing! (as usual, click on the image to enlarge it)

Have you looked at your teabag lately?

We have been trying different teas and recently I keep running across these cute little "fishnet" teabags.  They are shaped like a tetrahedron (ha!-my crystallography background comes through) and work quite well.  I cut on apart (after drinking the tea) and looked at it under the microscopy.  The length of each "square" is 1/3 mm.

I guess should save up a few and make a net for catching little pond critters!

Like my hairdo?

It has been a while since I have had any photomicrographs, so I looked around to see what I could find.  I still had the Virgin Tiger Moth that I "featured" earlier so I looked at it under my Nikon Alphaphot.  I must say this guy has a gorgeous head of hair!

This is shot at about 100x (probably 2mm in width).

Close up eggshell

Here is yesterday's egg in high definition!  This was a composite of about 40 images merged with Helicon Focus.  I do like the pattern on the surface of the egg (too large to be individual cells I would guess).

Eggs anybody?

I started to wash off one of the summer squashes that have been prolific in the garden this summer when I thought I saw something. I looked at it under the microscope and found that I had some recently hatched eggs. I decided that squash would make a good contribution to the compost pile....

The total length of the above image is about 4-5mm.

Mint blossoms

I think this is the Kentucky Colonel Mint that I have in the garden--whatever it is, I like it (not the photos, the taste in my iced tea).

Here is the side-by-side stereo.

And, for those who can't uncross their eyes, the anaglyph.