Best microscopic photos of 2008

Posted by Cory Doctorow, October 16, 2008 5:56 AM | permalink

~~National Geographic~~ Nikon's picked its best microscopic images for 2008 and there's some stunners this year -- like this high-mag view of the antibiotic powder mitomycin. Best Microscopic Images of 2008 Announced (Thanks, Marilyn!)

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#1 posted by Logotu , October 16, 2008 6:00 AM

It looks like a landscape out of the recent Doctor Who story "Midnight"

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#2 posted by Cragsavage , October 16, 2008 6:41 AM

Right - so that's mitomycin, right there. But what're those two glowing eyes in the background?

All Hail Micro-Cthulu!

HAIL!

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#3 posted by Marilyn Terrell

, October 16, 2008 6:44 AM

It's the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition, featured on National Geo's website. More about the competition here:
http://www.nikonsmallworld.com/

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#4 posted by Drew from Zhrodague

, October 16, 2008 6:55 AM

I got my SO to do her electron micrograph analysis (of rat brain cells) with The Gimp, though none are as stunning as these images. Yet.

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#5 posted by imipak , October 16, 2008 7:57 AM

Pfft, earth-bound microscopy is so 20th Century. There are two microscopes on the Mars Phoenix lander (which has only a few weeks' life left before lack of power and CO2 frost kills it). One is a traditional optical microscope, the other is an Atomic Force Microscope capable of imaging very small details. Some amazing images generated from the raw data by "amateurs" are on this UMSF thread (take a look and you'll see why the scare quotes are justified.) Note the thread's spread over multiple pages.

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#6 posted by camerongary , October 16, 2008 12:19 PM

Nitpick of the day: A microscopic photo would be a very small photograph. These are photos of microscopic things: Photomicrographs

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#7 posted by ekricyote , October 16, 2008 12:20 PM

"...EYES.....IN THE DARK....SEE THE EYES IN THE DARK....ONE MOON...SEE THE EYES IN THE DARK....ONE MOON CIRCLES..."

"??....Where are you?!!!"

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#8 posted by avraamov , October 16, 2008 1:10 PM

'...so here's how it works. the bacteria see this beautiful landscape, and they're like 'ooo. that's nice. let's explore', then we let loose the nano-wolves with the laser eyes to hunt and eat them. what? whaddya mean placebo?'

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#9 posted by Xaq , October 18, 2008 12:15 PM

Could the photo of the beetle be a composite? Not that I know a whole lot about beetle posture, but only one of its legs is actually touching the pin and it looks like about 3/4ths of the beetle is not resting on it. Huh?