Beauty Beneath the Microscope's Lens

<i>Arabidopsis thaliana </i>is the first plant to have its genome fully sequenced and is commonly used as a model in scientific research. But it was the unusually artistic appearance of the winning shot that inspired photomicrographer and plant biologist Dr. Heiti Paves of the Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia to enter the image into the 35-year-old competition.  According to Dr. Paves, besides being "nice-looking plant organs," anthers were a good subject because "they do not move very fast… The picture of my dreams should bring out motility of living cell, like a sports photograph." (Dr. Heiti Paves/Tallinn University of Technology/Nikon Small World)

Not all of the winning images were created by scientists using expensive state-of-the-art equipment. Gerd A. Guenther is an organic farmer from Dusseldorf, Germany where he produces vegetables, potatoes and hay for horses. His stunning picture of a thin cross section of the stem of a <i>Sonchus asper </i>blossom, a yellow blooming wildflower often found on farmland, won second prize.  The plant was magnified 150 times, bringing a new perspective to the wonders of nature.<br> "The remarkable contrast between the red hats of the plant hairs and the green stem in combination with the white stems thrilled me," said Mr. Guenther. (Gerd A. Guenther/Nikon Small World)

Dr. Pedro Barrios-Perez used brightfield to capture the wrinkled photoresist magnified 200 times in his winning image. Dr. Barrios-Perez of the Institute for Microstructural Sciences at the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa, won third place with a failed attempt to develop a photoresist pattern on a semiconductor. "These pictures are taken out of my interest in art," said Dr. Barrios-Perez. "If I show it to my boss, he just says, 'Throw the sample away.' I thought that it looked like a face with a fire that was warming up my days." He added that the particular result "cannot be reproduced – some of this stuff just happens." (Pedro Barrios-Perez/Institute for Microstructural Sciences/Nikon Small World)

When a former colleague sent him a section of an anglerfish ovary, James E. Hayden of The Wistar Institute came up with the idea of looking at the autofluorescence of the tissue in two colors. His vibrant swirling photomicrograph of developing <i>oocytes,</i> or unfertilized eggs, as they move along the spiral of an anglerfish's ovary came in fourth. Mr. Hayden said he is drawn to both photographic art and science. "Most microscopists have a streak of artist in them. It's hard not to. You're looking at things through a microscope that most people don't see. The nascent artist in you sort of peeks its head up." (James E. Hayden/The Wistar Institute/Nikon Small World)

A young, hungry sea star appears to open its mouth wide as its transparent tube feet grasp for morsels. Marine biologist Bruno Vellutini of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil said the sea star, or starfish, was imaged at 40 times magnification shortly after it had metamorphosed into a juvenile. He said he was lucky to find the juvenile seastar in the plankton samples he collected while looking for sand dollar larvae for his master’s thesis last year. "Scientific images don’t need to be beautiful," he said. "To take a good picture, you need patience to prepare light, make sure everything is clean. It takes a lot of effort to create a technically nice image." But, he said, taking beautiful pictures "makes research more fun." (Bruno Vellutini/Centro de Biologia Marinha/Nikon Small World)

Discus fish scales, magnified 20X, as captured by Havi Sarfaty of the Israel Veterinary Association. (Dr. Havi Sarfaty/Israel Veterinary Association/Nikon Small World)

The hair-like trichomes on <em>Thunbergia alata, </em>more commonly called the <i>Black-eyedSusan </i>vine, magnified 450X. (Dr. Shirley Owens/Michigan State University/Nikon Small World)

Cotton fibers stained with berberine sulphate and shaded to indicate depth, magnified 200X, explain this stunning image. (Dr. Lloyd Donaldson/Te Papa Tipu Innovation Park/Nikon Small World)

Inclusions are materials trapped within minerals during their formation.Here, Olivine inclusions in <i>gabbro </i>(magmatic rock), after being magnified 5X. (Dr. Bernardo Cesare/University degli Studi di Padova/Nikon Small World)

Algae and diatoms at 10X magnification.&gt; (Dr. Arlene Wechezak/Nikon Small World)

"Alzheimer" Zebrafish, stained for Tau (red), neurons (green), and pathologic Tau (blue), at a 10X magnification. (Dominik Paquet/Adolf Butenandt Institute/Nikon Small World)

Tsutomu Seimiya captured this picture of the flow pattern in draining soap film at 10X magnification. (Dr. Tsutomu Seimiya/Tokyo Metropolitan University/Nikon Small World)

A recrystallized melted mixture of acetanalide, resorcinal and carbon tetrabromide chemical,s magnified 33X. (Dr. John Hart/Hart3D Films/Nikon Small World)

Tora Bardal of Norway's NTNU Center of Fisheries and Aquaculture captured this photo of a lobster egg, magnified 3.2X. (Tora Bardal/NTNU Center of Fisheries and Aquaculture/Nikon Small World)

What is it? Why <i>Atherix ibis,</i> the aquatic larva of a a fly magnified 25X. (Fabrice Parais/DIREN Basse-Normandie/Nikon Small World)

Snail eggs (<em>Lymnaea</em> sp.) at 200X, as photographed by Massimo Brizzi of Microcosmo Italia. (Massimo Brizzi/Microcosmo Italia/Nikon Small World)

An ordinary stopwatch takes on vivid hues thanks to depth coding and a 2.5x magnification. (Dr. Rebekah R. Helton/University of Delaware/Nikon Small World)

Human skin on fibronectin with growth factor, shown magnified at6 60X. (Dr. Julia Sero/Children's Hospital Boston-Harvard Medical School/Nikon Small World)

Not your ordinary snowflake, as photographed by Yanping Wang of the Beijing Planetarium. (Yanping Wang/Beijing Planetarium/Nikon Small World)

A rusted old coin, photographed at 40x magnification. (Havi Sarfaty/Israel Veterinary Association/Nikon Small World)