Butterfly egg photography

[Trev Sawyer]

OK guys (and gals),
Anyone who has been investigating how to take photos of butterfly eggs (Pete )...
Have a look at these truly jawdropping images: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/ ... hotography
Just unbelievable eh?

Trev

[Pete Eeles]

Ooh - if I could just have a scanning electron microscope for Christmas! I'll point the missus at this one on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Amray-3800L-Scann ... 5191ca2ef0

Cheers,

- Pete

[Lee Hurrell]

Wow

Amazing pictures....staggeringly beautiful. The owl butterfly egg looks like an alien space ship!

I like the tongue in cheek nature of the commentator too: "The egg of the dingy skipper is laid on bird's-foot trefoil. As its name suggests, the grown butterfly, found throughout Europe and in parts of Asia, is not known for its beauty."

Cheers

Lee

[Lee Hurrell]

Ooh - if I could just have a scanning electron microscope for Christmas! I'll point the missus at this one on eBay

How much!??

Good luck with that Pete!

Cheers

Lee

[Jack Harrison]

I'll point the missus at this one on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Amray-3800L-Scann ... 5191ca2ef0

US $45,000.00 Approximately £28,230.87

I'm sure with a bit of haggling you could get them to knock off that 87 pence.

Jack

[Simon C]

Hi Everyone,

Not sure I'd refer to them as photographs, since they are produced using electrons, not photons.

If you want to get your hands on a scanning electron microscope then you should contact your local University - there is a good chance they will have one that you can book time on (plus expert advice in using it). It will cost in the order of a couple of hundred pounds a day.

Simon C

[Pete Eeles]

Very interesting. So how would you find out if a local university, or any other establishment, had such a beast and was willing to rent it out?

I'd love to "form a relationship" (= get things done free of charge) for appropriate publicity!

Cheers,

- Pete

[Trev Sawyer]

I will have to call in some favours from one or two of my workmates next week

Trev

[Michaeljf]

Just shows how a large white butterfly egg can truly be beautiful....I'm still going to call it a photograph and be damned though..

[Michaeljf]

If you want to get your hands on a scanning electron microscope then you should contact your local University - there is a good chance they will have one that you can book time on (plus expert advice in using it). It will cost in the order of a couple of hundred pounds a day. Simon C

Blimey, that's even more expensive than renting out a good Canon Lens for a day

[Trev Sawyer]

Didn't realise, but there is a short article about insect eggs and a video of how those particular electron micrographs were coloured (they would all have been black and white to start with). Both can be accessed from the original link above. The difference between the species is very well illustrated and I would love to see what the other British species would look like at similar magnification.
Definitely a project for a rainy day... week... month...

Trev

[FISHiEE]

Had a talk at the Kent Branch AGM yesterday by a Professor Maurice Moss who used to work at Surry University where he used their Electron microscope to capture stunning detail of butterfly scales.

His talk on how a lot of butterfly scales aren't coloured, but in fact are designed to bounce back certain coloured light was fascinating. At one time he had a shot of a disected butterfly scale. Quite how he managed to disect it I do now know. It was to highlight that for one central american species, there are tubes actually within the transparent scale that are exactly half the wavelength of green light and as such reflect back a brilliant green light. In a similar way this is how we see most of the more exquisite colours in our butterflies such as the stunning blue of the Adonis Blue the Green Hairstreak etc.

Might be a bit of a job to fit one in my camera bag unfortunaly

[Simon C]

Very interesting. So how would you find out if a local university, or any other establishment, had such a beast and was willing to rent it out?

I'd love to "form a relationship" (= get things done free of charge) for appropriate publicity!

Cheers,

- Pete

Hi Pete,

Most Universities has pretty good web sites these days, and are keen to advertise facilities that may be of interest to external users (i.e. people with cash!) - e.g. at UoB we have a Microscopy and Analysis suite which has its own set of web pages, although maybe not such a good example since they appear to be still under development, as far as I can see!. Probably the people most likely to value the sort of publicity butterfly-related images are going to attract would be in life-science related departments. A search on the web site of the nearest University or two might turn up a possible contact or two. I would just fire off an email or two - at the worst you will be ignored.

Unfortunately, as a theoretical physicist I don't even know how to switch on a scanning electron microscope. The closest I have come is some modelling on their use for nanofabrication.

Incidentally, imaging butterfly eggs in an SEM is far from benign - quite the opposite. They are certainly never going to produce adults. This might affect your enthusiasm for the technique. In addition if I recall correctly there is quite a lot of sample preparation involved, including dessication and coating with a thin layer of gold or platinum. This increases the number of secondary electrons produced in the sample, which are detected and used to create the image.

Simon