CoolLED voting selected the Top 5, and now it’s your chance to vote! The lucky winner will win a pE-300ultra Microscope Illumination System for fast, controllable fluorescence microscopy. If you’ve found an image in one of your microscopy images, you can enter our next competition which runs until the end of December 2020 – find out how to enter here.
Eye of Sauron (Alfonso Schmidt)
This histological transversal section of a hair follicle from a skin biopsy (400X magnification) also resembles the Eye of Sauron – the dark and omnipresent character from the Lord of the Rings movies. The section was stained with DRAQ-7 to highlight nuclei (orange) and the pupil is the autofluorescence of the hair (grey).
Valentine’s Day heart (Kelsey Moore)
We received this entry on Valentine’s Day and during Heart Month this year. What’s even more impressive is that these are heart valve cells (chicken valve interstitial cells; cVICs)! Cells are stained with phalloidin 594 (red) a cell permeant peptide FAM / 488 (green) and nuclei in hoescht 450 (blue).
Peacock feathers (Tim Self)
A healthy dose of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) crystals in polarised light- or do you see peacock feathers?
Cheshire cat (Andrei Savitsky)
This cross-section of the petiole of a peony leaf also looks like the famous grinning Cheshire Cat.
Ghost (Chet Closson)
This lab manager found a ghost in their cells! These are primary human hepatocytes stained with DAPI, Alexafluor 488, and MitoTracker Orange.