Centrales Diatom in salt crystal landscape

[MicroBob]

Hi together,
I was tidying up my microscope cupboard a bit and my eyes fell upon a couple of unnamed slides. They looked similar in that they all had some kind of mountant in the outer areas of the cover slip and air in the middle. I have no Idea when (if?) I made them. When I lookes at the firstone I found some centrales dieatoms, looking nice and contrasty due to the big difference in refractive index between diatom and air. The next slide contained similar centrales, but this time embedded in a nice crystal landscape. I usually take a microscope with me on holidays and have probably made them at the sea and mounted them in air and epoxy glue.

I like the image and the quality shows that it is no terrible problem to have no diatom mountant at hand.
Zeiss Jena 40:1 0,95 apo, optovar 1,6

Bob

[Wes]

Excellent photo! I really like the contrast between crystalline shapes in the background and the roundness of the diatom. The black and white fits it so well. Plus its shot with my favorite objective

Great work, Bob!

[Hobbyst46]

very special and attractive image, Bob!
The diatom itself is a real beauty. The scene reminds me of an alien flying saucer landing on top of the Alps or other bare mountains.
Looks like you master the 40X0.95 objective. I find them difficult to use and prefer the oil immersion objectives for NA~1.

[MicroBob]

Hi Doron,
I haven't used this objective much in the past but since I came to the old Phomi whith it's optovar it makes much more sense. It can't compete with an oil immersion objective even if the technical data is similar, but it is useful if the slides are changed often. For my mitosis project i have made about 40 test slides until now (many of them failures), the chromosomes are small and to get an idea how my prepatation work I can't wait for the Euparal to dry and oil it.
What I always find interesting with crystal slides: There is still so much height difference under the cover slip to get such uneven sharpness!

Bob