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.”

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From the nanoworld to the universe — the worlds we measure using our infinite yardstick.

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