Mineral surfaces under the SEM: 6 new micro-GigaPans

As mentioned yesterday, my student Robin has been having some success lately in making GigaPan-scale imagery using the new desktop scanning electron microscope that our division acquired. They aren’t as super-high resolution as most of the other GigaPan images I post here, but they are very, very small – and thus expand the scope of … Read more

Friday fold: Crumpled Dinwoody Formation, Sheep Mountain, Wyoming

Today for your folding pleasure, I give you two field GigaPans shot by Jeffrey Rollins, a two-time Rockies field course alumnus and Old Dominion University student working under my colleague Declan De Paor, assisted by NOVA student Bridget Gomez, during last summer’s extended GigaPan expedition at the Sheep Mountain Anticline, Wyoming. This particular outcrop was … Read more

A suite of plankton S.E.M. micro-GigaPans

My student Robin has been working (on and off) for more than a year to figure out the best way to make GigaPan-scale imagery using the new desktop scanning electron microscope that our academic division acquired. There are several technical challenges to be overcome, each different, and some with ‘solutions’ that cause other problems. Dealing … Read more

Who ate the woodpecker?

Occasionally, our big windows get in the way of birds. The latest casualty was a hairy woodpecker, Leuconotopicus villosus. While it’s sad that our home being where it is caused the end of this bird’s life, its body was an opportunity to teach my son something about wildlife and ecology. We have a motion-sensitive wildlife … Read more

The Hidden Half of Nature, by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé

David Montgomery is a professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington, in Seattle. I’m a fan of his work in soil conservation and countering creationism, so I was very pleased to find myself sharing the “honoree” table with him in Vancouver the year before last, at the annual awards luncheon for the National Association … Read more

New GIGAmacro images of rock samples

Another week, another batch of new images produced on my home-based Magnify2 imaging system from GIGAmacro. Leptaena brachiopod in (Mississippian?) limestone from Montana: [gigapan id=”185784″] Link Here’s the flip side of the same sample, with a lot of fenestrate bryozoans to see: [gigapan id=”185809″] Link Fault breccia from the Corona Heights Fault of San Francisco: … Read more

Five new GIGAmacro images

Here are a few new images I’ve been working on with my home-based Magnify2 imaging system from GIGAmacro. Strophomenid brachiopods from Mississippian Mauch Chunk Formation, West Virginia: [gigapan id=”185738″] Link Boninite from New Caledonia: [gigapan id=”185707″] Link Lepidodendron scale-tree bark from Poland: [gigapan id=”185689″] Link Potassium feldspar crystal, from a pegmatite: [gigapan id=”185688″] Link Catoctin … Read more