Hi everyone, Well, I've been futzing with my equipment for a bit, and I think I've got my final scope assembled.
Long story short it's assembled from different Nikon parts (some sold under other brands), along with mitutoyo metallurgical objectives. It's much the same as my last one, except some optical imcompatibilities were bringing it down before but now everything is running smoothly. My first test subjects have been various inclusions in some unheated Madagascan sapphires I got a while back. Click to see full size. Apatites! Rutile! Uh....something! A view from an airplane looking down at city lights through the clouds? Nope, it's rutile again! That's no moon (it's probably a sulfide).
Thanks! Yup, I've been using a Canon T6 for a while now. It does everything I need it to. Hmm, what's this, abalone with blister pearls? Not quite. That's right, these are those flat black inclusions you see in Tibetan 'diamond' quartz. These are usually referred to as anthraxolite (amorphous carbon) because that's what's in Herkimer diamonds, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. A few of these flakes are pleochroic, ranging from green to deep orange-red between crossed polars (the quartz itself providing the bottom polarizer) That suggests these started out as crystals, perhaps of biotite, which formed on the surface of the quartz as it was growing and were then heavily oxidized, rendering most of them into amorphous, leathery iron oxides/hydroxides. This is further reinforced by the appearance of flowing, swirling Liesegang banding in transmitted light: The surface texture is also wacky:
Fascinating, thank you for sharing these. Was this from a trinocular setup or some other system? I would also be interested to know if you can see this detail visually as well or is it like with macro photography that you see the detail in the photo after rather than to the eye while shooting?
Thanks! This is a trinocular metallurgical microscope, so I can switch between all the light going to the eyepieces and all going to the camera. It's not as handy for general inspection as a macroscope or stereomicroscope but it is still fun and comfortable to use.
I'd be happy to help with that. I migjt even be able to do it remotely, I've not worked on this model before but it shouldn't be too hard. What nikon do you have?
big respect for the quality of these images. photomicroscopy is considerably tougher than i initially thought it would be and it certainly makes appreciating these results that much easier.
Well, this really is my final scope, but I got DIC added on! That's the last major feature I was holding out for, thanks to Nathan Renfro's amazing DIC images (one of which is hanging on my wall in my field of view right now). This is a technique which basically uses a prism to split your illumination into two beams and then recombine what comes back, rendering fine reflective surface details into rainbow colors. It was a whole thing to get it to work, and it still needs a final pass mechanically, but it works! Now I can explore the surface geometry of gem crystals to my heart's content! It can also sometimes be used on inclusions that are just below the surface. To start with, here are some trigons, or rather "trigons," on a diamond, or rather a Herkimer "diamond" (doubly terminated quartz crystal from New York).
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