MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

You have a Chaoborus larva, a great find. Also called the ghost or phantom midge larva, it is a mostly transparent predator. The pairs of anterior and posterior air sacks and the folded long mouthparts are distinctive. They are usually found in deep water like big lakes or rivers. You are lucky to h...

Great Paramecium image. Looks like phase contrast, but since produced with a too small darkfield stop, it is probably Circular Oblique illumination. Some of the threads here on MicrobeHunter link to very good articles at Micscape: http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microsco...

Old water samples can still be very interesting. Your main subject that you chase throughout the film is a nauplius, the larva of a copepod crustacean. So yes a shellfish of sorts. At around 1:45 below the nauplius you see a stream of hundreds or thousands of bacteria. They somehow smell each other ...

Yes, those are muscles. Specifically striated muscle (the kind used for voluntary movements). The giant molecules making up muscle (actin, myosin, others) are stacked up in a repeating pattern. So muscle becomes a sort of squishy biologic crystal and is anisotropic (slows down light moving in one di...

I endorse the no medical advice policy, as have all the other respondents. But based on occasionally examining my own snot I think the "bubbles" you think are full of "bacteria" are actually white blood cells packed with granules. The most common white cells are called neutrophils. They are full of ...

Don: Love your enthusiasm and your amazing images/videos you have obtained with your Amscope microscope. Your experimentation has paid off many times, and I'm sure you will improve your current situation. There may a couple of simple things that help some with your current issue: - using a slide wit...

There is a section on "Condenser Fork Mount Changes" on the PS Neeley xmission site, explaining the compatability issues and some suggested fixes. (Google search for it). I once had an older AO Spencer phase condenser mounted on an an much more recent Reichert/AO Microstar IV (aka 410). The older th...

The above suggestions are reasonable but I think you found an amphipod. Your specimen is balled up as the water dries and contracts around it, but details of the body shape, eye, antennae and legs look like exactly like an amphipod. Amphipods are a group of marine and freshwater crustaceans related ...

Who would have thought protists were susceptible to childbirth tragedy? She was about to become twin daughters and now everyone is dead. Does anyone know if protists are extra susceptible to mortality during division? Or maybe this death was from another cause such as being squashed by coverslip or ...

You are right in your guesses. The stalked organism at the beginning of your first video is Vorticella (or some closely related peritrich ciliate protist; the true experts sometimes slightly correct us amateurs). Protozoans (=protists) are complex single celled organisms comprising their own kingdom...

Nice video. You can experiment with a green filter and tweak Koehler illumination and phase annulus alignment, but halos and slightly decreased resolution (compared to non-phase imaging) will remain. I find phase contrast looks a lot better through the microscope than with a camera, maybe because of...

I agree with what has been said by others. The mismatched short barrel objectives are worrisome that someone with no microscope experience bodged this one together. A Diastar with standard optics is a very good scope. Occasionally they come with a third party CAS (Cell Analysis System) installed. Th...

Plasmid asked- You can find lots of them under $200 now days, my question is...how much were this units being sold for in their heyday? I found a 1987 Microstar IV price list from "Reichert-Jung a Cambridge Instruments Company" (after AO and before Leica corporate merger days). A brightfield model 4...

Interesting video. Thanks for posting. Most times blood in the urine is harmless, especially when on blood thinners. But make sure to notify your doctor. Sometimes they will refer you for further tests. Getting good at microscopic analysis of urine takes years. Urine can have all sorts of things in ...

I have 2 probably 1980's Swift M8004DP phase contrast darkfield microscopes up for bid on eBay this week that may be of interest to some forum members. They were good quality educational scopes, made in China with main objectives made in Japan. One is in good original shape and is a very good and co...

Being unable to fix the slip clutch focus tension I decided to sell my two Carolina Wolfe student microscopes on eBay. If someone knows how to fix the stage drift they may get a good deal, as starting bids are low.

I don't know anything specific about your possible "worm" but be careful not to talk yourself into something that isn't real. Parasitic worms often have segments or bristles or distinctive mouthparts. A high level of expertise and experience is needed to identify parasites accurately. The pictures s...

Greg:

The rubber ring would be a fine idea for some scopes. I like it.

But my microscope's problem is the clutch is loose. The stage falls independently of focus knob movement.

Thanks,

Ed

Thanks to everyone for their advice. I tried twisting the coarse focus knobs in opposite directions, but it never felt any tighter or looser and didn't fix the drift. Perhaps a plastic cam is cracked in the mechanism. I imagine that means disassembling the coaxial fine and coarse focus knobs and the...

I have 2 Wolfe (Carolina house brand) "Contour Advanced" binocular student microscopes. Made in China, came with clones of Olympus EA objectives. Overall good quality mechanics and optics but the stage drifts down out of focus. So loose it slips down and won't come back up with turning focus knobs, ...

A stereo microscope is a great choice for introducing young kids to microscopes. Bugs, rocks, leaves, trash, pond muck, skin, fabric, paper, salt, electronic devices and many other things look interesting under a stereo microscope. It will be a great tool to boost your daughter's innate curiosity. G...

I have an AO 570 stereo microscope. They good scopes. Good and varied illumination makes them work even better. I use my led ringlight to produce darkfield. The ringlight is set led side up on the stage atop a piece of black paper (or black stage plate). I found a squat plastic cylinder with clear w...

I have different Toup View compatible usb cameras, but slowing down in my set up is often the result of- 1. Excess live view resolution. Find "capture and resolution" in the Toup View camera menu (it has most of the basic functions like snapping a picture, exposure and color adjustment, so I keep it...