Something that really bugs me

~Today, more microscopy. A mosquito somehow slipped into my apartment and met a gruesome demise at my hands.  Staring at her sad, shattered corpse on my palm, I decided to immortalize her tiny body by looking at it through a high-powered scientific instrument:

Wings at 40x.  Note the fine hairs all along the wings, and indeed all along the entire body.  These hairs help the mosquito to be extremely sensitive to any movement nearby.

The head, squashed a bit from her demise, at 40x.  Let's take a closer look at the eyes...

Compound eyes at 200x; the one on the right is crushed in both from being swatted, then being flattened into a pancake by the microscope slide.

The more intact eye, centered, 200x.  Note the hexagonal arrangement of the compound eye.  While you see only two images of what you're looking at (which are combined by your brain into a single image), she saw hundreds of small images.  This sort of vision is optimized for detecting movement, since the slightest motion becomes more obvious when you're seeing it hundreds of times.

Top of the head, 40x.  The long vertical top-to-bottom structure on the right is one of the mosquito's folded legs.  I think the thinner, horizontal structure is one of her antennae, because it looks to thin to be the blood-sucking proboscis.  That may have been the broken-off structure on the far left.

A closer view of the antenna at 100x.  Note that it, too, has tiny hairs along its length. 

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

~My intrepid voyages have brought me to the city of Montrose in Colorado, where I found time to visit the nearby Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.  It's one of America's newest national parks, designated as such in 1999 (although it was a U.S. National Monument since 1933).  Like the more famous Grand Canyon, the Black Canyon was carved out of volcanic rock by a river; in this case, the Gunnison, which descends very steeply though the area.  

Naturally, I took some pictures while hiking to the various overlooks along the South Rim Road.  For reference, if you look at this map, all of the pictures below were taken at various overlooks along the South Rim Road (marked in red along the map), between Tomichi Point and Dragon Point.

The scale of this place is colossal and hard to believe even when you're right in front of it.  Notice the jagged ridges along the canyon walls, which consist of harder rock than the softer rocks that were worn away by the river below.

Speaking of the river, here it is, the mighty Gunnison.  It's named after a U.S. army officer who was killed by natives while scouting for a railroad to the west coast, although the river was known long before that.

The canyon area has three distinct biomes: the dry area near the top, dominated by scrub and hardy trees (and some not so hardy, like the one above); the middle, primarily evergreens clinging to the less-steep south slope, and the wet river area which sees wide variations in flow rate based on the season.

The Black Canyon is geologically fascinating because it's so easy to see different parts of the rock comprising it.  The long, light stripes seen throughout the canyon are comprised of a rock called pegmatite, which was formed by cooling lava that squeezed into cracks in the softer, darker rock (called gneiss) around them.  It's easy to see where the fissures were, because the  light "pegmatite dikes" remain.

Pegmatite is a type of granite usually composed of feldspar, mica, quartz, and garnet; the distinctive sparkle of mica is evident throughout the rocks of the canyon.

A wider shot of the canyon; can you make out the Gunnison river on the lower left?  Notice also the wide pegmatite dikes on the large cliff face left center.

Another shot of the river.  See how the ground to the right of the river is so much less steep than on the left?  That's because of the direction the canyon is facing at this point.  In this area, the left side received more sunlight, and so over a long period of time, was drier than the right side, which was shaded from the sun and therefore experienced less evaporation of moisture.  More moisture means softer ground, which over time collapsed.  See the grayish patch to the right of the river near the center of the picture?  That's a talus (also known as a scree) -- an area of loose, collapsed rock caused by weathering.

A panoramic image of the area from the previous picture.  Click on it for a larger view.

Jagged towers of stone soar into the air above the river.  This area was lower than from the previous pictures, so you can see that the area around it is greener.  This is because there's more shade from the canyon walls at this depth, which keeps moisture from evaporating as fast as on the arid land around the rim of the canyon.

This hawk was right at home soaring over the canyon.  I envy it' glorious freedom of movement: to soar from one side of the vast canyon to the other, plummeting down towards the river at will, alighting on spires of towering rock accessible to only the most ardent rock-climbers.  If you're a hawk, I'm sure this is a great place to live.  Move in now!  All rent generously subsidized by U.S. taxpayers!

Here is one such inaccessible area: a tiny forest on top of a large rock island in the middle of the Black Canyon.  A great place for a hawk to make a nest!  It might get a bit dry, but you can always fly down to the river for a drink and a bath.

...but how far down do you need to go to actually get to the river?  From this overlook, your guess is as good as mine: I couldn't see the bottom of this inky crevasse.  Hang on to your camera!

A-ha, there's the river!  Can you see it, there in the middle?  It's a loooooong way down.

A great view of some pegmatite dikes on the north wall of the canyon.  Imagine them as they formed: glowing hot lines of lava bubbling out of the rock, slowly cooling off while deep underground, only to be exposed millions of years later by the slow but relentless wearing away of the Gunnison river.

More pegmatite dikes.  They look like gigantic petroglyphs scrawled on the canyon walls, don't they?

In this case, even though the huge rock faces have broken apart, you can easily see where they were joined from where the pegmatite breaks off and continues.

These broken columns of stone seemed on the verge of tumbling into the canyon.

These strange rock formations look almost man-made, like the blasted, abandoned ruins of ancient structures.

This being a national park, there was plenty of plant and animal life as well.

Yellow flowers near the canyon rim.

It's difficult from these pictures to capture the scale of Black Canyon; you really have to see it for yourself.

Maybe this panorama (again, click on it) will give you a better sense of scale.

Don't step over the edge!  But if you must, aim for the river.

Until next time!

Rochester

~My latest travels recently brought me to the lakeside city of Rochester in New York, home of Kodak.  Here are some pictures I took while I was there:

The Council, by Bill Stewart, 1991.  This strange sculpture is in the Rochester airport, and is based on Inuit art.

Another unusual piece of work in the Rochester airport: a clock surrounded by domed flags of several nations.  The signs in front of each flag tell a traditional story from that country.

Below are pictures from a military exhibit at the airport.  It was a neat collection of models and artifacts from various wars:

Edward Mott Moore, by Thomas Hudson Jones, 1927.  Moore was a surgeon in Rochester who was known as the "Father of the Rochester Park System". As president of the Park Commission, he developed the city's public green spaces.  Appropriately, this sculpture is in the Genesee Valley Park.

A grove of trees in Genesee Valley Park.

The Genesee River, which crosses the Erie Canal.  There were a few members of the University of Rochester crew team out practicing.

Microscopy, part 1

~I recently acquired a digital microscope (a Celestron LCD Digital Microscope), and I've been having fun with some amateur microscopy.  It has a base zoom of 10x, and objective lenses of 4x, 10x, and 40x magnification, along with a digital zoom of up to 4x (so at maximum combined digital/optical zoom, it has a magnification of 1600x).

Here are pictures taken with the microscope's built-in digital camera of the sample slides that came with the device:

Dicotyledon wood stem, 40x

Dicotyledon wood stem, 100x.  From here we can better see individual cells.

Dicotyledon wood stem, 400x.  The magnification is almost too strong at this level, and things start to get blurry.  But isn't it interesting how the cells of different shapes and sizes connect to each other?

Stem of cotton, 40x. Similar to the wood stem from before, but with large of hexagonal cells in the center.

Stem of cotton, 100x.  Let's take a closer look at those cells in the middle... 

Stem of cotton, 400x.  See the boundary between the larger cells in the lower-right and the smaller ones to the left?

 

Stem of cotton, 100x.  This image was taken near the edge of the stem.  Notice the much thicker outer layer that protects the delicate cells in the upper-left.

Stem of cotton, 400x.  Individual cells are packed against each other in this plant cut.

Mature pine wood, 40x.  The outer edge is rough and torn up at this magnification.

Mature pine wood, 100x. Notice the beautiful linear arrangement of plant cells, almost perfectly lined up.

Mature pine wood, 100x.  This is the same plant, but the image is taken at the edge of the sample to show how different the cells there are from he previous image.

 

Mature pine wood, 400x.  This is a closer view of the lined-up cells from before.

Mature pine wood, 400x.  A close-up of the protective outer edge.

Onion skin, 40x.  Notice how much more simple this image appears to be than the complex arrangement of cells from the previous images.  The cells interlock with each other like puzzle pieces.

Onion skin, 100x.  The cells aren't a single defined shape; instead, it appears that individual cells seem to have grown and expanded into wherever there was space to fill in gaps in the skin.

Onion skin, 1600x.  This is the maximum magnification of the microscope.  Is this a cell nucleus?

The same image as above, but seen through a green color filter that is built into the microscope.

Fly's leg, 40x.  Look at all of those tiny hairs.

Fly's leg, 100x with color filter.  A closer view of the hairs.  If you ever wonder why flies at rest are constantly grooming their legs, it's to keep all of this clean so they can be sensitive to the tiniest movement...like a gigantic hand trying to swat them.

Fly's leg, 400x with color filter.  This didn't come out too well; I need to experiment more with the various lighting and color settings of the microscope.  But you can see the follicles at the base of each hair, and how some of the follicles are missing hairs.

I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into the microscopic world around us.  I'll be taking more pictures and videos in the future with the microscope, so stay tuned for more.~