Gold Bugs

leonardturner · Post by **leonardturner** » Sun Jan 17, 2016 5:02 am

Some 20 years ago I had the great good luck to be given the run of a Zeiss DSM 962 scanning electron microscope in exchange for showing it off to visitors at a natural history museum. My responsibilities included finding specimens, mounting them on the 1.3 cm aluminum slugs, and sputter coating them with gold before transferring them to the SEM for demonstrations. I kept the instructions for operating the massive scope (I had no prior experience, and remain to this day astonished at the detail and depth of field afforded by these devices). My specimens were kept in a plastic travelling case, which I recently rediscovered, and thought it an interesting idea to show them as photographed and stacked, seen in the visual part of the electromagnetic world rather than outlined with electrons. They have, of course, suffered the loss of some of their parts, some of their gold and the attacks of the ever-present fungus, sort of a microscopic Ozymandias.

Photographed with 10X BD Nikon objective on a tube lens or with CFN 10X on Labophot, Nikon D810, Zerene stacker.

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Sun Jan 17, 2016 1:32 pm

Very nice

abpho · Post by **abpho** » Sun Jan 17, 2016 4:14 pm

Wow. What a great experience. It was nice that you were able to keep the samples. Great pictures. I wonder if you process them (somehow) if you can make it look like a SEM image.

carlos.uruguay · Post by **carlos.uruguay** » Sun Jan 17, 2016 6:00 pm

Stunning images. What is each of them?

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Sun Jan 17, 2016 7:07 pm

These are magically beautiful! Thanks very much for sharing the story and the images. I wish I could figure out how to sputter-coat my plant specimens like that; I don't need SEM-level resolution but I need to make my subjects opaque and ideally rigid.....

Litonotus · Post by **Litonotus** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 12:29 am

Great!

The flea is stunning...

leonardturner · Post by **leonardturner** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 5:55 am

My thanks to you all for your kind comments.

Carlos, from top to bottom they are flea, dandelion seed head, antenna of bumblebee, a small fly, and a large black ant.

Abpho, a fascinating idea to try to duplicate the SEM look. I'd like to play with that when I get a little time.

Lou, I was no expert on sputter coating--I just followed directions with somewhat varying results. As I recall, the device was very expensive and used gold foil which was periodically replenished. I am adding an image of the coincidental deposition of gold on the base on one of the stubs, probably on the adhesive used to mount the specimens. An interesting pattern--

Did anyone notice the tiny mite near the ant's surviving antenna? That made for an interesting discussion item during the demonstrations, I think.

Olympusman · Post by **Olympusman** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 10:01 am

Wow! Gold-plated bugs. Even if you don't have an electron microscope, sputtering looks like a wonderful terchnique for light microscopy.

Mike

Sumguy01 · Post by **Sumguy01** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 9:12 pm

These are amazing.
Thanks for sharing.

leonardturner · Post by **leonardturner** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 12:17 pm

My thanks to you both, Mike and Sumguy; much appreciated.

Gold Bugs

Gold Bugs

Gold bugs