Fair arthropod, we hardly knew thee! Ladies and gents, meet the stinkbug, here for all to admire in a rare close-
up.
We Why Filers did not take this shot. We wouldn’t dare. After all, the vermin has earned its name: When handled or disturbed, stinkbugs produce a sweet, pungent odor from glands in the thorax. It scares away predators, and as far as we can tell, journalists too.
No, we owe this addition to the insect family album to Tina Carvalho, AKA MicroAngela, of the Pacific Biomedical Research Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Carvalho photographs her subjects (which range from dust particles to insect eyeballs) using a high-resolution electron microscope. These dandy instruments use a beam of electrons as the source of illumination (as opposed to the traditional beam of light used in traditional microscopes). Because electron beams have shorter wavelengths than beams of light, they make it possible to see things at higher magnification and resolution.
It’s just the tool for folks like Carvalho, who like to dress up little things. Once an electron microscope image allows her to see intricate features of her subject, she digitizes them and colorizes the images with special software designed to enhance – rather than cover up – details that the microscope has revealed.
We’ll leave the job to her, in this case.
Image courtesy MicroAngela.
