Microscopy of fungus from plant pot in kitchen 9/12/2018 – Leitz Laborlux 11, Bresser Mikrocam SP5.1 camera, oil immersion objective

Posted by Andrew Thornett

This fungus was growing on the earth around the base of the plant in a plant pot in our kitchen in Lichfield. Interconnecting hypae can be seen but the stand-out difference between these photos and those of fungus on bread and cheese I have posted in past is the lack of spores.

  • Leitz Laborlux 11 microscope.
  • Magnification 10-100x objectives. The 100x objective was oil immersion and I could not find the proper oil so used extra virgin olive oil as my immersion oil!

Andy

x10 objective:

SIngle hyphus:

Branching hyphae matrix:

x40 objective:

x100 oil immersion objective, using virgin olive oil as immersion oil (as I could not find the proper immersion oil bottle!):

Sructures at edge of algae from pot pond

Posted by Andrew Thornett

The following two photos show structures on edge of an algal strand from my pot pond – not sure if these are part of algae or other organisms which are using it as a platform to base themselves….

  • Leitz Laborlux 11 Microsocope
  • x40 objective
  • Bright field
  • DCM-310 Camera for Microscope.
  • ScopePhoto 64 bit software
  • GIMP2 post-processing.

Andy

M45

Posted by Kenneth Crichton

ts been a while now since i posted my preliminarily preview of the Esprit 120 mostly due to a combination of work/family/bad weather and Xmas parties. On Friday evening the forecast was clear until around 7ish so i was able to get a few shots of M45. I chose M45 as its a great star cluster which would be good to determine star shapes in the corner of my sensor.

I was able to get 26×2.5min before the clouds started to roll in. For this test the position of M45 wasn’t great so there is a light pollution gradient etc, which isn’t important to determining star shapes, optical errors.

Anyway looking at my RAW images id say the scope covers about 98% of the sensor. For the remaining 2% a very small amount of vignetting is visible with a strong histogram stretch and an ever so slight amount of coma on stars at the extremities of the image. If your using a 36mm sensor like me then a very slight crop is necessary, although most people would do this anyway. If your using a standard APS-C Dslr then your stars are pinpoints to the edge! Very impressive in my book. Zooming into a bright star i can see no signs of star bloating.

I don’t know how Skywatcher are able to achieve such high quality for such a low price (in comparison to high end competitors) but im delighted!

The image ive posted is about 75% crop, for your perusal if anyone wants a full uncropped image please let me know.