Morpho sulkowski... another look

[Charles Krebs]

Craig's post of about a week ago caused me to get out a Morpho sulkowski specimen I have. It is an interesting one to look at in terms of iridescence. Here I have photographed the exact same wing section. The only difference was the position of the light. The top image shows no iridescence. The scales appear to be translucent with a honey color. But when the light is moved around things sure do change! We can't see the micro-structures that cause this with the light microscope, they're too small. This is where an electron microscope comes in. But we can see something the electron microscope can't... the wonderful color display!

This is a great reference:
http://newton.ex.ac.uk/research/emag/bu ... ature.html

All three images: Nikon D300 with Nikon M Plan 20/040 ELWD on bellows.






Sorry I have not been able to participate in the forum too much lately. It's going to be really tough for me time-wise, at least through the summer. But I do peek in from time to time to see what people are up to!

[augusthouse]

Beautiful Charlie!

The material in the reference link you have provided is priceless!

Craig

[beetleman]

Excellent demo of the iridescence Charles.

[lauriek]

Wow, somehow I managed to miss this post, spectacular!!

I presume it's the iridescence which causes that sort of noisy look to the blue colour?!