Garlic skin up close. Cells in the skin are filled with crystals of oxalic acid to protect the plant. The crystals are made visible by polarised light at 200x magnification.
Award-winning microscopic photographer David Maitland has taken a series of fascinating magnified photographs that reveal the microscopic world of everyday objects.
The images were taken to promote electronics firm Sharp’s range of TV displays, and range from the tongue of a sea snail to the skin of a garlic plant.
The most eye-opening image–literally–is an extreme close-up of the human eye. Normally covered by a clear transparent structure called the cornea, the nerve cells in the picture have been tinted silver to make them visible, creating a mesmerizing pattern of jagged lines.
Check out the rest of the photographs below, and find out more about them in detail here.
The radula, or tongue, of a common marine rocky shore ‘netted dog whelk’ Nassarius reticulates photographed at 200x magnification
The front surface of the eye is covered by a clear transparent structure called the cornea. Nerve cells in the picture, which is taken from a Victorian slide, have been stained with silver to make them visible, shown here at 400x magnification
The tail feathers of a peacock taken at 100x magnification
[via Daily Mail, images by David Maitland for Humans Invent]