Life through a high powered lens: the Nikon Small World awards

Small but perfectly formed, some of the titchiest wonders of the natural world have been revealed in their full glory by groups of chemists, biologists, materials researchers and botanists working in laboratories round the world. These are the winners, and short-listed finalists, of one of science's longest-running imaging competitions: the Nikon Small World awards. This year, scientists from 63 countries sent in entries for the competition which this year is celebrating its 35th anniversary. These microscopic submissions are not merely judged for their informational content and their technical proficiency but for their visual impact. A selection of some of the most striking are displayed here. These works, selected by competition judges, include close-up photographs of iridescent crystals of the mineral cacoxenite; a starfish embryo; an extinct marine diatom; a butterfly egg nestling among the buds of a flower; trout alevin; and a caddis fly larva head. This year's first prize went to the image, shown at the centre of this article, of a close-up view of the heart of a mosquito. Taken by Jonas King, of the biological sciences department of Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, the image involved the use of a technique known as fluorescence microscopy which exploits the fact that certain substances can be made to emit one kind of light while being bathed in a different form of radiation. Typically the emitted radiation is of longer wavelength than that of the light shone on the specimen. For example, many minerals, crystals, resins and organic compounds emit light when bathed in ultraviolet radiation. By carefully tailoring the radiation shone on their sample, the Vanderbilt team were able to create a photograph that shows the delicate traceries of tissue inside a mosquito's heart. http://www.nikonsmallworld.com/gallery/year/2010/83