In 1846, Carl Zeiss opened a workshop for precision mechanics and optics in Jena, Germany. 168 years later, ZEISS is producing some of the world’s best microscopes and taking incredible pictures of tiny worlds.
Adhesive section of a ladybug leg. Courtesy of Dr. Jan Michels, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany.
After stumbling onto ZEISS Microscopy’s Flickr page, I was enraptured with colorful mouse neurons and stained octopus embryos. These photos were taken with everything from simply high-powered microscopes to top-of-the-line scanning-electron microscopes. In a lot of cases, you don’t have to zoom in that far to see an amazing new view, but you do need the right equipment:
Head of an ant. Courtesy of Dr. Jan Michels, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany.
In other cases, you need laser-scanning microscopes and fluorescent dyes to bring out different tissues:
Fluorescence microscopy of a multistained squid embryo. Courtesy of the MBL Embryology Course 2013 participants Nathan Kenny, Kathryn McClelland, Sophie Miller.
Or sometimes you just get something horrifying when you look too close:
Head of a tick (Ixodidae family). Courtesy of Dr. Emil Zieba, Catholic University of Lublin, Lublin/Poland.
But there is beauty hidden in this world of the small. Neurons inside a mouse hippocampus, for example, look like a cross between trees and fireworks:
Mouse neurons. Courtesy of Yi Zuo, Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology (MCDB) Department, University of California Santa Cruz
ZEISS Microscopy has hundreds of amazing photos like this. Head over to their Flickr page to see more, and check out some of my other selections in the gallery below.
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FEATURED IMAGE: Longfin inshore squid. Courtesy of Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, and Development
GALLERY IMAGES (from left to right):
Multichannel fluorescence slide scanning of mouse brain
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