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Chris Korman
03-02-2011, 12:20 AM
Here is a photo of what is known as a comet. If you pour a polymer solution known as a resist on to a surface but the surface has some small debris, the debris actually blocks the flow of the polymer solution creating a comet like structures when the surface is spun at high speed. In this case the polymer is a type of polystyrene which has been subsequently etched by a reactive gas. The yellow/white circle is silicon.

These things reduce yield but they are very colorful because the polymer is very thin which creates different colorations at different thicknesses, much in the same way you see colors in a soap bubble.

http://webs.lanset.com/hypoploi/jpeg/polymeric-comet.jpg

Color corrected and cropped. 10X Magnification.

Jerry van Dijk
03-02-2011, 09:08 AM
Hi Chris, a very neat science image again! Very pleasing composition with the diagonal of colors.
We actually have an exhibition of this kind of photographs in one of our national art museums called 'Beauty of Science', in which your photographs could easily be added. Check out the museums website: http://www.boijmans.nl/en/7/kalender/calendaritem/754/schoonheid-in-de-wetenschap
At the top right there's a button to switch to English.

Roman Kurywczak
03-02-2011, 05:52 PM
Hey Chris,
I do think that this could use a bit of NR.....perhaps due to the magnification.....but a bit of smoothing will only help the strong and colorful comp!

Ken Childs
03-03-2011, 11:11 AM
I'd also like to see this smoothed out just a bit. Other than that, this looks awesome! :S3:

Chris Korman
03-04-2011, 02:32 PM
Hi Jerry, thank you for the url to museum and your kind comments.

Hi Roman & Ken, RE: smoothing out the "noise" I think what you are seeing are pixels, as the microscope has fairly low resolution capture as the source image is about 1 MP. So basically if you want more "detail" you need to switch to a higher magnification. Thank you also for your comments.