Pollen - Phacelia tanacetifolia

[RudiV]

I found a lonely Purple Tansy - Phacelia tanacetifolia blooming in a corner of my garden. The pollen is quite large and blue/purple in color.

The images were taken of the pollen still on the stamen using an Olympus BH-2 BHM metallurgical microscope. The illumination is EPI dark field.

10x objective, 43 image stack.



20x objective, 58 image stack.



EPI illumination has opened up new possibilities as far as non transparent subjects are concerned. I still need to learn how to get the best out of it but I can see I am going to have fun with it!

Thanks for looking,
Rudi

[billbillt]

Hi Rudi,

That is a very beautiful set of photos!... Great work!...

BillT

[zzffnn]

Nice, Rudi.

Did you apply polarizer over your epi darkfield light?

For 10x shot, you may try high angle incident (regular overhead) light. Many times incident light gives better images, when working distance is long enough.

[RudiV]

Hi Rudi,

That is a very beautiful set of photos!... Great work!...

BillT

Hi BillT.

Thanks!

Rudi

[RudiV]

Nice, Rudi.

Did you apply polarizer over your epi darkfield light?

For 10x shot, you may try high angle incident (regular overhead) light. Many times incident light gives better images, when working distance is long enough.

Thanks!

No, I did not a polarizer but I do have the option on the scope so I will give it a try.

Thanks, yes, I did notice that even with the lamp off I was getting an image, at one stage this morning there was sun shining on the bench and it created some interesting highlights. The 5x and even the 10x objectives has quite large working distances so it would be easy to use other light sources. New to me was the fact that as the magnification went up the light was brighter(I suppose due to the objective and thus the light source getting closer), opposite to what I am used to.

I only have a 6V/15W light operational at the moment between the 2 scopes, the 12V 50W lamp was dead on arrival, looks like vibration got it as the coil is broken on both sides. I have a batch on order but they will only be here late next week.

Thanks for the comments, I am absorbing as much as I can from the experts!
Rudi