Water Drop Colony

Images made through a microscope. All subject types.

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nucleobyte
Posts: 51
Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2010 8:00 pm
Location: Virginia, USA

Water Drop Colony

Post by nucleobyte »

I was out after a rain today and noticed a tiny white object moving rapidly and erratically inside a water drop on a leaf. I managed to capture one somewhat. A bit later I saw what looked like a whole raft of these little guys floating on top of another water drop. It seemed like one would zip around and rejoin the raft from time to time. I thought they were interesting enough to post and that someone might be able to tell what they are. Not the greatest images unfortunately since they were very small and moving a lot. I wasn't sure if this belonged in the macro or micro forum, but I thought the micro folks might be most likely to recognise them.

All the images were taken with a Canon 5DM2 and Nikon Finite Conjugate 4X objective on a PB6 bellows. The first was at about 4.7X on the sensor and the last two at about 8.6X on the sensor. All are cropped. I figure the swimmers are a little over 100 um long.

Image
Image

This is a 1:1 pixel crop of a single organism.

Image

SDB
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2011 6:53 am
Location: Southern NJ

Post by SDB »

Hi, This is my first attempt to post anything on this forum. I might be wrong, but the last picture looks a lot like it might be pine pollen.

Cactusdave
Posts: 1631
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2009 12:40 pm
Location: Bromley, Kent, UK

Post by Cactusdave »

Yes this looks like pollen right enough. The motion of the particles is due to surface tension effects on the spherical droplet.
Leitz Ortholux 1, Zeiss standard, Nikon Diaphot inverted, Canon photographic gear

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