For the 49th year in a row, Nikon is recognizing outstanding microphotography (or photomicrography, if you prefer) in its Nikon Small World competition. The highest honor goes to Hassanain Qambari and Jayden Dickson of the Lion’s Eye Institute in Perth, Australia, taking the image above. What you are looking at is the optic nerve of a rodent. Fluorescent dye shows the astrocytes in yellow, the contractile proteins in red, and the retinal vasculature in green. Got that? All the winning images are breathtakingly beautiful. The one that really drew my eye was the third-place image by Malgorzata Lisowska of Mazowieckie, Poland.
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
These are breast cancer cells at 40x magnification. The image involved brightfield lighting and image stacking, but I can’t help but wonder whether there was some manipulation going on. Or is it just serendipitous pareidolia? See the top 20 images ranked with their descriptions in this gallery. Check out the honorable mentions, too. -via Digg
Source: neatorama