Phase Contrast Diatom Strews

[KurtM]

One of my primary passions is Diatoms! I collected this bunch from the Blanco River near Blanco, Texas, in October 2014. Photos were shot through my AO 10 travel scope using 100x objective with bright phase contrast, Canon T3i shooting directly into the trinoc tube with no relay lens. The frustules were cleaned with hardware store drain cleaner, and mounted in Pleurax.

[mrsonchus]

My these things are majestic! They have an incredible inherent beauty, brought to us by your superb mounts. These are lovely images, they're almost ethereal. You can see how such structures may inspire film-makers when they design all-manner of alien-type spaceships etc!
Superb and beautiful..

p.s. How are they mounted, the technique sounds very useful..?

[rnabholz]

Dang, you reminded me of another thing I have to do - get my Pluerax and make some cool Kurt Diatom Slides....

These things are so cool. What delicate beauty. Phase adds a ethereal feel to them too.

Stand by to coach me...

Rod

[vasselle]

Bonjour
Superbes photos j'adore.
Merci pour le partage
Cordialement seb

[molehill]

Nice images indeed, tell us more about the cleaning process.

[gekko]

Very beautiful images. Very good cleaning and mounting work. Very well done indeed.

[KurtM]

Thank you, all! Here is the Youtube three part short course on diatoms collecting and cleaning that got me started, and which more or less remains the only instruction I have been able to follow since I have exactly zero training in chemistry, and little, if any, natural intuition for it. I dream of some day taking diatom cleaning to the next level with stronger acids, fume hoods, and the like, but in the meantime am in no rush to kill myself or blow up the house. So drain "Liquid Plumr" it is for now.

Part 1 Collecting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrhSqu8YCBo
Part 2 Cleaning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-uN2RPvDSM
Part 3 Observing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVI-P0AWDd4

A few more pictures...






Funny how that last bunch happened to land on that cover slip, isn't it? Just kidding, that's a Klaus Kemp 25-Form Exhibition Slide.

[75RR]

Beautiful and detailed images. That 100 Phase is working very well.