MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Nice, I'm looking forward to seeing your work.

I saw the JL set, looks really cool but $5000 would leave a hole too large for my hobby budget.

Given a block of calcite, what is the best way to accurately find its optical axis? Would it need to be polished to find that? Ideally it would be nice to shoot polarized colminated light through, motor an objective around to find the maximum output plane. I'm still vague on the optical axis aspect...

Nice video!

Mind telling us about your microscope, DIC setup and camera configuration?

Great project! I was under the impression that making DIC prisms is extremely difficult hence the astronomical prices. Something along the lines of cutting slabs at an angle of 30 seconds. A lot of prisms have to produced to generate a few that are fit for purpose, these are then binned according to...

I have a Jamin-Lebedeff condenser but no matched objectives and beam recombiners. Its a set of techniques I'm quite interested in learning more about and trying for myself but as you said these are extremely difficult to find. If its not too much I'd love to see your Jamin-Lebedeff set and some micr...

A freshwater diatom that measures 70x12 microns. The image is a stack of 13 photos. For some reason the bottom layer of scum in one of my pond cultures is riddled with diatom frustules.

The cell on the lower left side of the chain mass looks like a yeast cell that has switched to hyphal growth. Some yeast species do that for example Candida.

mintakax wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 09, 2020 12:44 pm

How are your cultures doing ?

they dried out.. the one that remains is exploding with bacteria and Colpidium (or something similar in appearance). I think I will add water to the dried out ones and see what springs back to life (last time I checked there were tons of Naegleria cysts).

Thank you billt and tgss!

Awesome shot, I really like the dominant colors too!

Thanks for sharing mintakax, fascinating organism and a great video (as usual). I might have missed it but have you ever made a thread about your aquarium?

Any idea what the accompanying flagellated organism is next to the amoeboid? I keep seeing these in many of my samples too.

BR
Wes

apochronaut wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 27, 2019 1:54 am

that's the most wonderful delaminated lens, I have ever seen.

I second that!

I wonder what would happen if you soak them in warm hexane or xylene.

Thanks Charlie The majority of ciliates I spotted were moving around actively. The samples were exposed to AO from anywhere between 10 to 40 minutes. I think the intense illumination is what kills or at least impairs them after a period of observation. A rather dramatic end meets amoeba species sta...

You are a protist wizard Bruce! Many thanks for the identification. I read that this is an anaerobic organism and I managed to find it inside a decaying maize kernel in the bottom of the culture where I'd expect poor oxygen conditions.

Regards
Wes

... Two questions if I may: 1. Which lamp is installed in the epi-illuminator ? Hg, Xe or halogen ? 2. I notice that you placed the microscope on a thick spongy-styrofoam-like board. Is it to protect the bench/desk surface from the metal underneath of the scope, or vibration dampening ? the scope i...

Thanks Pete. The green and red touch certainly adds to the Christmas spirit.

I found this organism in a pond water culture that had a lot of crustaceans and insect larvae (it was lightly capped and when I opened it a wimpy mosquito tried to escape). The organism measures 40 x 110 µm in size. The images are of the same animal (different z-planes) and are original size, just c...

Thanks 75RR. Its very refreshing to learn new techniques.

So, I assume that the acquired part is the filter-cube carrier assembly and perhaps the field and iris apertures in the tube between the lamp and filter-cubes ? or just filter housing if they are not arranged in cubes ? Thanks Hobbyst46. According to the Zeiss manual the condenser includes the fiel...

Acridine orange is a fluorescent dye that can be excited with blue-cyan light and upon binding do DNA and RNA it fluoresces in green and red respectively (there are of course other things that make it glow green or red). Here I added the tiniest drop (< 100 nanoliters) of an acridine orange stock so...

Merry Christmas to all members! I hope you, your family and your hobby are doing well. After another annoying hiatus I am finally back to tinkering with my microscope. Before I had to freeze all of my microscopy related projects I acquired a Zeiss RSIII epifluorescent condenser. I had to adapt a few...

Thank you Piter for the informative reply. I agree that phycoerythrin is the likely source of red fluorescence when stimulated with green light.

Did you try switching the eyepieces? In other words is the problem at the eyepiece or the binocular head? I had similar experience (albeit not a huge difference in brightness) and found out it was the result of light polarization due to the reflection inside the binocular head. Place a polarizer in ...

You can read the original (recent) research here:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fu ... 19)31431-9

Found the link! "All these photos were taken with the Zeiss lens 1/10 inch, nA 1.63. Monochromatic sunlight. Special compensation eyepiece 12. Condenser 1.6. Inclusion in a medium with refractive index 2.4. Coverslips and flint glass slides with a refractive index of 1.72." Image is in the post abo...

Great Photos 75RR! Maybe you need to try one of the older Zeiss Objectives with n.A. of incredible 1.6: PlanApo 100/1,6 Imm or the 74/1,6 ;) NA of 1,6?? I had never heard of that till now. I know some of the modern 100x planapos used for TIRF microscopy deliver NA of 1,46. Can you provide a bit mor...

Out of curiosity do you see the striae in Amphipleura pellucida with the 63x planapo? It might be the right subject to also test the effect of condenser oiling on resolution.

Thats really good! Excellent contrast and resolution, thanks for sharing.

One minor issue I have is that the replacement dichroic mirror I use does not fit in the round slots and is 1-2 mm above its intended position. Since only the 580 DM fits in the round slot there is a small lateral shift in where the lamp field stop is seen when switching back and forth between the ...

My impression was that it is the most universal setup to have a short pass excitation filter and a long pass emission filter. So that all light below a certain wave length is used for excitation and everything above is passed to the eyepiece. This is how my two setups work now. With my 18W LED I ge...