Nano GigaPan- Changing the Way You See

Human Breast Cancer Cells

2010-06-29T15:55:00.001-07:00

We are in an exciting image with the Hamamatsu company. They create high end instruments which capture full field microsopic images. We were able to upload a sample image provided by them.

See the image on Gigapan.Org

Our philosophy has always been that we have tools for capturing images, tools for stitching images, and a website for sharing and annotating those images. We don't care if you use 'our' tools - our excitement is to provide tools for capturing, processing, and sharing gigapixel imagery!

Stitching Troubles

2010-06-17T11:35:00.000-07:00

I have taken a few focused stacked mosaics that are not stitching well for some reason using the gigapan stitcher. One is of a daisy, and the other is of the tip of a foxtail. I am going to try to figure out how to use autopano giga to stitch them and see if that works.

Ant and a Fly

2010-06-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

The image you see here is of an ant holding a fly, taken using an optical microscope. The images is focused stacked and is a 4x6 mosaic stitched together. The image is magnified ~40x and is particularly interesting because it is a micro-gigapan of a specimen imaged last summer using a scanning electron microscope. It is neat to compare the two imaging techniques and notice the variations on what you can and cannot see through each microscope.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

This SEM image is composed of 288 images magnified around 400x.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Flower Power

2010-06-10T11:39:00.001-07:00

This week I have been taking lots of micro-gigapans, both focused stacked and not, of flowers found outside my office. When I was outside I noticed that there were at least 8-10 different varieties of small flowers among the grass and was surprised by the diversity and wanted to capture it.

This gigapan was taken of a yellow flower that had been dried, the image is composed of 170 pictures taken through a table top optical microscope. The flower has been magnified ~40x. This image was not focused stacked and is 1.82 gigapixels.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Here are two other flowers that I have imaged. The red flower is a mosaic of 24 images, each of which was focused stacked with 62 images at various focal points. This means that although the final image is only .16 gigapixels, we took a total of 1488 pictures.

The Purple Flower was just a quick focus stacked mosaic, it is composed of far fewer images than the red flower, and the flower was magnified ~40x.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat"

2010-06-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

This is a 35 image non-focused stacked gigapan of a drop of blood magnified ~40 and taken through a optical microscope.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Tails

2010-06-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

This is a micro-gigapan of a penny, it is composed of 367 images taken through an optical microscope. This image was not focused stacked but you can explore it here:
http://gigapan.org/gigapans/50690/

The front side of the penny had been imaged previously and can be viewed here: http://gigapan.org/gigapans/41737/

A Flea

2010-06-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already had the pleasure of seeing a flea, or just wanted to see one up close for once, and not crawling on your dog, this micro gigapan is for you.

This image is an initial test to see the utility of imaging flea samples using the incident light microscope. It was composed of 525 images, focus stacked with 21 images deep in a 5 x 5 array.

This flea, along with some others, was given to us by the Carnegie Mellon museum of natural history.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Focus stacked micro-gigapan

2010-06-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

Here is the first focused stacked micro-gigapan. It is composed an array of 16 images, each of which is composed of 20 images that are focus stacked. 320 images were taken to make this image, which is only 0.11 gigapixels

Here is another image to compare this focus stacked gigapan to. It is a 4x4 array stitched together, but instead of using the focus a single image. As you can see it is stacked images, we instead just used not nearly as in focus as the image above.

Maker Faire 2010

2010-05-28T11:51:00.001-07:00

Small World Explorations had an exhibit at maker faire (May 22nd-23rd) in San Mateo CA. We explained our project as well as gigapans to hundreds of people over the course of the weekend and were greeted with a lot of enthusiasm by the maker community.

Maker Faire 2010

2010-05-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

Getting Ready to Print

2010-05-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

Using the Gigapan gives you the freedom to select the
aspect ratio, or shape, of you your pictures.

Since you specify the top left and bottom right of your
images you can make them short and wide, tall and narrow,
or anywhere in between.

This freedom is great until it collides with the physical
world with standard size monitors and paper.

Large format printers get paper (or canvas or vinyl) on rolls,
so the fixed factor is the width.

To calculate the length you need to print a Gigapan
on a certain width paper:

Length of Paper = height of paper * gigapan width/gigapan height

Example:

I have a 91084 x 17246 Gigapan and I want to print it on 44"
wide paper. So what is the length.

length = 44" * 91084 / 17246 = 232.4" = 19 feet.
232.4" x 44" = 10,225.6 square inches = 71 square feet

There are different rates, but I've been quoted $10 per square foot
to print. That would be $710, so I probably won't be printing that
GigaPan at that size until printing costs come down!

More focus stacking fun.

2010-05-03T22:32:00.000-07:00

Focus stacking is fun. Here is a 32 image stack of a slice of a crystal/geode which Spencer bought at the California Academy of Sciences last year.

I've also been getting interested in fabrics, and textiles. So here is a small stack, 6 images, of a tweed weave tie dyed fabric.

First Results with Model 163 Microscope

2010-04-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the nice people at the Maker Shed of Make Magazine we have an awesome new microscope to play with.

To prove the point that you don't need automation in order to capture a GigaPan style mosaic of images (assuming you have a good eye, and patience :-) I took the following gigapan of part of a 6 inch machinist's ruler. The numbers are tenths of an inch, and the hash marks are hundredths of an inch.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

This image was taken with the 4x objective, which normally has a 40x magnification, and a 4.5mm Field of View. The SLR camera adapter adds 2.5x of magnification, to 100x, and each frame has a 1.8mm field of view.

All thanks to Dan Woods and Rob Bullington at Make Magazine for giving us a huge discount on a 'Compound Oil Immersion Microscope model 163' It is like their model 162 but with a 3rd viewing port which comes straight up.

We also got a SLR Photo Adapter, with a 2.5x magnifying lens which ends in a T-Mount, and a T-Mount adapter for the Canon T2i camera.

The result is a comparatively inexpensive instrument which has a non-motorized xy stage and non-motorized focus knob. We are working to adapt the XY and Z axis to be controlled by stepper motors with an arduino running a slight variant of the G-Code CNC machine code from the Makerbot/RepRap code base (the variation is just ripping out some code and libraries which we don't need in order to make it compile a little easier).

New

2010-04-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

micro focus stacking tests

2010-04-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

This weekend I managed to start playing around with focus stacking, using Zerene Stacker. I seem to be getting mixed results from the final output images. There are however quite a few variables to play with, modifying depth of field through aperture size both on the camera and the microscope, varying number of images in a stack, light conditions, etc. The images above show the preliminary results. They were all imaged using the same aperture settings, about mid setting on the microscope and 6.3f on the camera. Each set of images contains the final stacked image on the right and two of many (40-50) images used to create the final stack, giving some sense of the obstacle of a reduced depth of field. These images were taken at roughly ~200x, ~1000x, and ~2000x magnification. It's neat to compare these images to those taken with the SEM in the gigapan below:

View the full image at GigaPan.org

imaging the imager

2010-04-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

The subject of this micro-gigapan is the optical sensor of a canon powershot G1. The chip is about 8mm long and 6mm wide. While the entire length of the chip was captured, only a small portion of the width was imaged due to the highly repetitive pattern of the light sensors.

The focus stacking feature has still yet to be implemented on this microscope. As such the chip had to be very level with imaging plane. The chip was leveled using a two degree of freedom rotation stage.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Recent Press - Boing Boing and CNet

2010-03-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

We are always happy to get press!

We were boing boinged last week - Thanks Mark Frauenfelder!

And today James Martin of CNet gaves us a great writeup with lots of embedded images!

Thanks James!

Enhance: The unofficial theme of the GigaPan and NanoGigapan Projects

2010-03-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

This could be the unofficial theme video for the GigaPan project...a serious of video clips from movies and TV with the command Enhance! Followed by video enhancement.

GigaPans, and NanoGigapans let us zoom in-which is a lot like 'Enhance!'

At the Last Etech in 2009 Julian Bleecker did a great talk on Design Fictions. Brutally summarized, the idea is that the best way to present a new technology (real, or imagined!) is to assume that the technology exists, and to insert it into a work of fiction.

As an audience we are trained to the suspension of disbelief in watching stories, and so we accept the technology, and we experience the characters as they interact with the technology to advance the story.

The quintessential example is the motion controlled displays in _Minority Report_. According to Julian (or to my memory of Julian's talk :-) A technologist worked with the actors to develop a coherent gestural language. To develop something which felt like it made sense to the actor, and to the character who the actor was attempting to inhabit.

The visuals were all faked. The system didn't have to react to the actual gestures, that is what special effects are for! But the experience of the actor in creating this language, and the experience of the audience in experiencing that interface as an integral aspect of a compelling narrative were real.

And this process of creating a technology first in fiction works. It works much better as a method of conveying the possibilities of new technologies than doing a demo at a trade show or conference.

And in many ways it is also harder for a technologist to create this sort of Design Fiction than to just write some code or to create a product. Deciding that we should have a device which, for example, tracks where we are and displays that in 'useful' ways on a map, along with annotations about our mood, and biometric data, and ambient data, is easy.

And designing such a device is relatively easy.

But designing it to actually be something which even alpha geeks, let alone average people, can use is very very hard.

Christian Nold created Biomapping at about the same time as Schuyler Erle and I were working on related ideas. Hell, it is even possible that we predated him :-) But getting any device to function is hard. And even now, to the best of my knowledge, Christian has created beautiful maps and proofs of concept, but has not yet penetrated into even the geek community.

Julian wrote about Design Fictions a year ago. It is well worth reviewing.

Big plans for small things

2010-03-12T07:37:00.001-08:00

Randy Sargent, Gene Cooper, Rich Gibson and I (Jay Longson) are working towards developing a suite of tools to aid in making these macro/micro/nano gigapans. We're hoping to very soon put together a standard recipe to enable people to adapt their own microscopes to take similar imagery. Our goal is for this to become a DIY project with differing levels of complexity based on the makers knowledge and skills. On one end of the spectrum will be a kit with all the necessary parts to create a gigapan enabled microscope, on the other end will be makers using some of the tools we develop here to modify their own microscopes. We hope to publish the "how to" through Make magazine. We aim to get these tools into the hands as as many people as possible, research scientists and kids alike. Stay tuned for more information.

Giant Penny!

2010-03-11T14:23:00.001-08:00

Here is a slightly lower magnification (~200x) micro-gigapan of the US penny. It was composed from 320 images, making a total image size of 600 megapixles. It's neat to ponder which marks on Lincoln's face are artifacts of the penny making process and which were intentionally etched.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?"

2010-03-11T14:06:00.000-08:00

This micro-gigapan was shot at a magnification of nearly 2000x. The image is of a blood smear on a piece of single crystal silicon. While the specimen was relatively flat, there is still enough variation in height to make some regions out of focus due to the severely limited depth of field at this magnification. Clearly some focus stacking is in order.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Micro-gigapan setup

2010-03-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

We've made this little video to show off the micro-gigapan in action.

This setup consists of:

• Computer running some code written in Processing to control the xyz stage and the camera.

• Prior ProScan xyz stage to control the specimen position relative to the microscope.

• Lecia DMLM light microscope.

• Canon PowerShot S5 IS being triggered using the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK).

First micro-gigapan; bee wing on tape and silicon

2010-03-11T13:30:00.000-08:00

Finally we've made the push to get our optical microscope working as a micro-gigapan! Here is our first attempt. There's obviously some problems with the vignetting due to the microscope-camera adapter, though this should be solvable.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Ant Night

2009-08-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

We presented the Nano Gigapan ant images at the California Academy of Sciences Nightlife. Nightlife is a evening social event at CAS that happens every Thursday evening. It gives people a chance to explore the museum at night and ask questions. Nano Gigapan set up a table and had the opportunity to present some of our images and talk to people about our work.

Aphaenogaster occidentalis

2009-08-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

This Nano Gigapan is of an ant commonly found in Northern California. We found this one in the kitchen. It is the same species as the one below that's holding a fly.

This Nano Gigapan is a head shot of the ant that is composed of 80 pictures. The ant is magnified 500x.

You can see optical images of it on ant web. http://www.antweb.org/description.do?rank=species&name=occidentalis&genus=aphaenogaster&project=calants

View the full image at GigaPan.org

The Nano GigaPan in Action

2009-07-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

In this video you can see how the Nano Gigapan is hooked to the SEM, how it moves the stage, as well as how the pictures are taken. Jay was explaining the process while taking a Nano Gigapan himself. If you want to see the finished image that he was taking during this video.

Ant holding a Fly

2009-07-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

This is an SEM Nano Gigapan of an ant holding a fly in its mandible. This image came about when we found some ants this morning in the kitchen and decided to take them into work to image. While looking for other cool things to image I also stumbled across a very small fly that was dead on the table (you might not believe me, but the house we're staying at is actually really nice, and at least appears very clean). Lacking another container for putting samples into, we dropped the fly in with the live, albeit confused ants, saying "they probably wont eat it." Seconds after touching the bottom of the container, the ant you see here snatched the fly up and proceeded to hold on to it for not only the commute into the office, but also during a stint in the freezer, a move from the container to the SEM stage, and then while in a vacuum. That is dedication.

The ant and fly are magnified 400x and this image is composed of 288 pictures taken with the SEM.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Match Heads

2009-07-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

This Nano Gigapan shows two match heads side by side, illustrating the difference (as seen under a scanning electron microscope) between a unlit strike anywhere match and one that has been burned. This difference is clear with the naked eye, but can you tell which has been burned looking at it with a different tool? This image is composed of 140 pictures of matches magnified 150x.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Drift wood & Pygmy forest twig

2009-07-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

Here are two gigapans of two different wood samples. Neither of these are quite the bark that someone requested, however, they both look pretty nifty. This first nanogigapan is of a piece of drift wood, the image is made up of 25 pictures taken using a scanning electron microscope. This piece of driftwood was found on the Northern Californian coast. The segment we imaged is of the very center of the wood and you can see this by looking at how the structures seems to radiate from the middle of the gigapan. The driftwood is magnified 300x.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

The second nanogigapan is of a cross section of a twig taken from a pygmy tree in Mendocino. The twig is magnified 250x and you can make out the growth rings in this image.

Rollie Pollie

2009-07-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

This is the latest nanogigapan and is an image of a pill bug, or rollie pollie. This view is of the rollie pollie unrolled and on its back (a position that was rather hard to prepare because when faced with premature death the rollie pollie rolls up in to a small ball). Because the specimen was so large, I was only willing to magnify it 200x so that I only had to take 250 images. However, even with relatively small magnification it is a fun image to explore, especially because it is of such a familiar insect.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

NanoGigaPan project works with STAR Participants

2009-07-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

The project is currently working with Lisa Adams, a Student Teacher and Researcher (STAR) participant, who is spending the summer at NASA Ames. Adams intends to design five different lesson plans that use Nano Gigapan images to help students more easily grasp and visualize the material. So far we’ve imaged pollen, a pill bug, and a cockroach leg by her request. Hopefully this will help expose school aged children to the world of the small and show them how much is out there that they can’t even see.

Barnacle Gigapan

2009-07-08T12:12:00.001-07:00

This barnacle Nano Gigapan is really cool. Take your time, really zoom in and explore this one. The barnacle was found washed up on the back of a crab shell at Mendocino's big river beach. In this Nano Gigapan you can see the crab shell around the base of the barnacle.

This image is composed of 384 pictures taken with a scanning electron microscope, which took me around 5-6 hours to capture. The barnacle is magnified 800x.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

SEM Photo Slide Show

2009-07-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

The Latest Nano GigaPant

2009-06-30T13:05:00.000-07:00

This ant is from Madagascar, and is named Eutetramorium mocquerysi. The species is notable for having wingless queens that are indistinguishable from workers.

This image is composed of 400 pictures magnified 400x using a scanning electron microscope. The ant was given to us to image by Brian Fisher an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences.

For some more information, along with optical microscopic images click here.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

More Ant Nano Gigapans!

2009-06-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

More Ants are on their way! The Nano Gigapan project has received some ant samples from colonies at the California Academy of Sciences which are in the process of being imaged. Seeing as there are over 30,000 species of ants in the world, we could have a new ant image every day for the next 83 years (funding permitting, but looking at NASA's latest LCROSS mission it does seem like they want to minimize long term funding, apparently by crashing things into celestial bodies). Luckily the Cal Academy only gave us three ant samples to start out with, and luckily they're not unique and highly prized type specimens seeing as how I have large hands and ants are small and breakable.
Here is the first Nano Gigapan of these three samples, which were given to us by Brian Fisher, an entomologist at the Cal Academy. This image is composed of 208 pictures taken with a scanning electron microscope. The ant is magnified 500x.

View the full image at GigaPan.org
This ant is from the species Proceratium MG03 which is thought to be a specialized predator of spider eggs.

And here is another Nano GigaPan of a different ant specimen given to us, this is just a head shot. It is composed of 132 pictures magnified 500x. This ant is from the species Strumigenys vazimba. These ants use their large head muscles to snap their mandibles close at high speed.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Snow Algae

2009-06-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

The Nano GigaPan project is working with Thomas Beer and Nathan Bramall, two scientists at NASA Ames, to take images of algae samples. These scientists are studying different types and species of snow algae. Snow algae is interesting because of its ability to live in extreamly cold environments. We have done five Nano GigaPans for them and they can all be viewed here on the Gigapan website. Bellow is one Nano Gigapan we took of a green snow algae sample (there are both red and green types).

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Small Parasitic Wasp Nano GigaPan

2009-06-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

We originally thought this insect was a very small fly, but luckily an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences pointed out that it was not a fly, but rather a small parasitic wasp. This Nano GigaPan is composed of 425 images of this wasp magnified 1000x using a scanning electron microscope. It was stitched together using the Gigapan stitcher, and uploaded to the website. This image is 250 megapixels. I think that this is the best image I've taken so far.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Update on the Nano GigaPan Project

2009-06-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

The Nano GigaPan project is continuing full steam ahead in its mission to change the way we see. We recently submitted a proposal for a NASA innovation grant, this money would help us develop the Nano GigaPan hardware to make it convenient for other institutions to capture these types of images (we will know if we received the grant June 30th). Sharing this technology is one of our main goals, regardless of whether or not we receive the grant. So far the project has focused on taking interesting, or scientifically useful images, but now we will move on to develop the Nano GigaPan to work on other imaging tools. We are already collaborating with scientists from NASA Ames, the Stanford Neurology department, and the California Academy of Sciences to meet our goal of allowing other institutions to utilize this technology.

Give Me Liberty!

2009-06-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

This Nano GigaPan is composed of 70 pictures of the Heads side of a 1978 penny. I didn't even realize a penny had Liberty written on it until I decided to see what it looked like under a Scanning Electron Microscope. Enjoy!

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Small Parasitic Wasp

2009-06-11T15:39:00.001-07:00

Tiny Fly
Originally uploaded by Nanogigapan

I am currently taking a large nano gigapan (if that's at all possible) of this small parasitic wasp . The gigapan is set up to be 450 images.

Moth Nano Gigapan

2009-06-10T13:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a Nano Gigapan of a the head of a moth. It is composed of 195 pictures stitched together and is 130 megapixels. The moth is magnified 800x using a scanning electron microscope.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Moth Foot x800

2009-06-10T10:55:00.001-07:00

Moth Foot 800x
Originally uploaded by Nanogigapan

The feathery foot of a moth magnified 800x using the scanning electron microscope. Check out our Flickr photo stream to see it magnified even more!

Moth Eye 250x

2009-06-10T10:52:00.001-07:00

Moth Eye 250x
Originally uploaded by Nanogigapan

This is a quick picture of the eye of the moth that I am now taking a 220 image NanoGigapan of.

Close up of the Beetle's foot

2009-06-09T13:34:00.001-07:00

Beetle Foot
Originally uploaded by Nanogigapan

Here is a picture of the foot of the beetle from the NanoGigaPan bellow. It was taken using the SEM at 1200x magnification.

Beetle Underbelly

2009-06-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

Check out this beetle, it's magnified 800x using the SEM. It stitched a little funny in places, but he looks pretty cool. I was aiming to image the whole beetle, but needed to cut it short to make way for a training session scheduled for the SEM I was using.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

New Scientist

2009-06-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

We were recently blogged about on the New Scientist blog.
Check it out!

Gigapans and NanoGigaPans at Sebastopol IGNITE!

2009-06-05T11:50:00.001-07:00

The Gigapan and NanoGigaPan projects will be at IGNITE Sebastopol on Wednesday, June 10 at the Hop Monk Tavern. Doors open at 6:00pm, MAKE contest is at 6:30pm and talks start at 7:15pm. Reserve your spot, it's filling up fast.

Rich will get 20 slides, which automatically advance after 15 seconds - so 5 minutes to push the message.

Here is a fun article about the event from our local alternative paper.

Sebastopol is a bit over an hour north of San Francisco. It will be fun. I imagine that it will be captured on video - more when we know more.

Ant x800

2009-06-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

Here is a whole ant magnified 800x using the SEM, it doesn't look much like the ants from a bugs life...
This picture is composed of 136 images (the head of which was imaged before by Jay) taken using the nanogigapn unit. It is magnified 800x using a Scanning Electron Microscope. The Antennas were not part of the original gigapan, and were taken by hand, they are made of 16 pictures and were put together in photoshop and added to the ant which was stitched by the gigapan stitcher.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Ant Foot 200x

2009-06-03T09:59:00.003-07:00

Ant Foot 200x
Originally uploaded by Nanogigapan

Here is a series of pictures of an ants foot at different magnifications (200x, 1000x, 2000x, and 3000x). It is the same foot in each image.

Ant Foot 1000x

2009-06-03T09:59:00.001-07:00

Ant Foot 1000x
Originally uploaded by Nanogigapan

Ant Foot 2000x

2009-06-03T09:58:00.003-07:00

Ant Foot 2000x
Originally uploaded by Nanogigapan

Ant Foot 3000x

2009-06-03T09:58:00.001-07:00

Ant Foot 3000x
Originally uploaded by Nanogigapan

Egg Shell

2009-06-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

I had to search my lunch for ideas of things to image, so here is 15 pictures of a piece of an egg shell stitched together. It has been magnified 1000x using the SEM.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Flower seed

2009-06-02T13:08:00.001-07:00

Flower seed
Originally uploaded by Nanogigapan

fuzz around a flower seed along with part of the hairy seed magnified 120x taken with a Scanning electron microscope.

Dandelion seed

2009-06-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

This Gigapan is of the 'fuzzy' end of a single Dandelion seed, magnified 1200x it does not look as fuzzy as it does with the naked eye. This is a 20 megapixel image composed of 25 images from the SEM.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Spider Mite foot

2009-06-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

This is a 10 megapixel image of the Red Spider Mite's foot. It is composed of 12 images, 2 columns, 6 rows. It is magnified 3000x using the Scanning Electron Microscope.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Flickr

2009-05-26T09:43:00.001-07:00

Here is a link to the the nanogigapan flickr page. This has pictures of the process of taking the gigapans, as well as some snap shot images of different specimens using the SEM. The pictures are not gigapans:) View them here.

Red Spider Mite

2009-05-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

This SEM image is of a spider mite that I found in my back yard. You may recognize the little red spider that this is an image of. I did not include the whole back end, but you can see the start of his last two legs near the bottom of the picture. This was taken using the Hitachi SEM at 1000x magnification, it's made up of 210 pictures.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Spider foot

2009-05-26T09:29:00.001-07:00

Spider foot
Originally uploaded by Nanogigapan

250x magnification using the SEM

Spider foot

2009-05-26T09:27:00.001-07:00

Spider foot
Originally uploaded by Nanogigapan

A picture of a mite spiders foot at a higher resolution than the gigapan that we took. This picture is at 3000x while the gigapan was 1000x.

More on Zinc Oxide

2009-05-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

David Speck wrote with more on Zinc Oxide

I thought ZnO crystals were a well known demo specimen for SEM work. At least when I was at Cornell in 1975, they were a favorite item for demonstrating the power of a SEM. I remember going to the SEM lab on Olin Hall with a friend who had bought some cheap SEM time at 2:00 AM. The most memorable item we looked at was the ZnO smoke sample.

Zinc burning in air forms perfect tetrahedral pointy crystals in a broad range of sizes that resemble a caltrop from outer space. See:

http://embedded.eecs.berkeley.edu/caltrop/pic/caltrop.jpg

I thought I'd have no trouble finding an image of these crystals, but an extended Google search didn't bring up a single example. Perhaps they have been forgotten. It would be interesting to see them again.

Moth Antenna

2009-05-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

This morning we took a 135 image gigapan of the tip of a moth's antenna at 1,000x magnification.

The antenna curves in from the upper left.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Future Gigapan Ideas

2009-05-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

This is in no way a comprehensive list, but what I have gathered so far is that people have expressed interest in seeing the following things imaged:

Bee, leg/pollen
Leaf, stoma
Hard drive platter
Soil
Pond water
Coca Cola
Artificial sweeteners
Bacon (cooked or uncooked?)
Fingerprint
Zinc oxide structures
Cloaking material
Blue Morpho butterfly wing
Super lens

There are some great ideas here and other suggestions are encouraged!

Possible subjects - Zinc Oxide crystals

2009-05-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

David Speck wrote with a suggestion:

You might want to try some zinc oxide crystals. They form amazing three dimensional tetrahedral structures. I saw them with a SEM a lifetime ago.
You can make it by igniting a thin strip of zinc metal (rescued from the shell of a dead cheap carbon-zinc battery). It burns like magnesium, but with less enthusiasm.
The thick white smoke is very toxic to the lungs, so don't breathe it. It should stick to a glass microscope slide without much encouragement.

Aside from the whole 'very toxic' thing this sounds fun.

What do you think we should image?

SEM Image of NaCl

2009-05-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

An SEM gigapn of sodium chloride (NaCl), table salt. It was dissolved in water then left to condense back out on a piece of Silicon. This piece is about 1mm long and 0.5mm wide.

This is composed of 84 images taken at 1500X magnification.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Taken by Jay Longson

You can pan and zoom in the image, or click on the blue title bar to jump to this gigapan on the gigapan.org site.

SEM Image of blood and hair

2009-05-14T19:16:00.000-07:00

Seventy pictures at 1200x magnification of an eye lash (really an eyebrow hair) next to a dried blood sample using the SEM. You can see the red blood cells in the sample.

View the full image at GigaPan.org
Taken by Molly Gibson (who was also the blood and hair donor)

You can pan and zoom in the image, or click on the blue title bar to jump to this gigapan on the gigapan.org site.

GigaPan Epic 10,000x

2009-05-14T19:15:00.001-07:00

IMG_8487
Originally uploaded by jaylongson

The nano Gigapan attached to the knobs on the Hitachi Scanning Electron Microscope.

The only glitch is that because there are no gears the stepper motors are turning the wrong way, so the picture numbering is off.

I think we just need to flip the polarity of the two pairs of wires to each stepper and it will magically move the right direction.

Click on the photo to enter Jay's photostream on flickr where you can see other pictures of the nano Gigapan mounted to the SEM.

Prototype for the nano gigapan

2009-05-14T19:07:00.001-07:00

Prototype for the nano gigapan
Originally uploaded by Rich Gibson

April 22, 2009 - This is the first pass Nano gigapan unit. Jay designed this to be cut out on the laser cutter at Tech Shop. We found some mat board for this first prototype. You can see all of the burnt edges. There was ash flying all over!

You can see more of these pictures in Rich's nanogigapan set on flickr

The Ant

2009-05-14T18:52:00.000-07:00

This is the first proper nano-gigapan using the a modified gigapan unit attached to a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The image was then assembled was then stitched using the gigapan stitching software. The image is of an ants head at 1000X magnification. It took 64 images.

View the full image at GigaPan.org

Welcome to the Nano Gigapan Pan

2009-05-13T11:37:00.000-07:00

From the beginning the GigaPan project has been about reaching out, exploring, and connecting people with each other and with the wonderful shared world around us.

In that spirit Jay Longson has created the 'Nano Gigapan.' This is GigaPan modified to control a Scanning Electron Microscope.

Follow this blog to see our progress at exploring the world at the (near) nano scale!