It's like a dream . . . the good kind!

I love algae, especially diatoms, but my vision problems limit the ways in which I can study them. I had to change my graduate project mid-program because the amount of microscope work my initial project required was undoable for me. I got out with a master's degree instead of a doctorate, and I've been trying for the last couple of years to start a doctoral program elsewhere with a different focus.

Now ultra-high resolution imaging is making this possible. The eight "science panoramas" in the collection allow extreme zoom-ins. The linked image is centered on a barnacle attached to a crab. Being who I am, I'm a lot more enthused about how easy it is to zoom in on individual diatoms.

This kind of tech is expensive, of course, but it's come so far in the last five years, that I have renewed hope that next year I might get into a program that can afford the older magnified imaging camera I got to use one summer. That would be perfect.