Atalanta : Wings and Scales

WalterD · Post by **WalterD** » Tue Sep 04, 2018 10:55 pm

One of the most common butterflies over here is the colorful Atalanta.
I found a damaged wing that provided enough material for many hours of looking through the lens.
The first two images were done with reflected light, 6.5x and 42x reflected darkfield. The other 4 were taken with the wing in mountant.
Picture 3 with differential intereference contrast 25x
Picture 4 darkfield 16x
Picture 5 and 6 ditto unstacked (single shot) images, respectively 16x and 100x objectives. For the 100x photo of the scale I've used an iris objective (which has a small built in diaphragm ), useful for darkfield at higher magnifications.

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For better resolution please check http://waltermachielsen.com/atalanta

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Wed Sep 05, 2018 2:37 am

Very nice

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:00 am

Very nice and diverse. What was the objective for picture 2?

anne · Post by **anne** » Wed Sep 05, 2018 11:24 am

Ver nice images!
Please can you tell us what mountant you used?

BR
Anne

carlos.uruguay · Post by **carlos.uruguay** » Wed Sep 05, 2018 1:45 pm

Nice!!

WalterD · Post by **WalterD** » Wed Sep 05, 2018 11:48 pm

Thank you, muchas gracias! The 42x/0.60 objective is a Leitz Ultropak lens, designed for reflected darkfield with built in condensor. (looks a bit like below) Next session I'll be use it again with speedlite, now I've been using Leitz halogen lamp.

The mountant is euparal, it's worth experimenting with. You could try to apply a thin layer of mountant on a slide, put a wing on top of it and leave it for a while. After removing the wing, a very thin layer of scales might remain.

7 = oil immersion darkfield 50x
8 = fluorescence, 21x