Greetings Physicist Wannabes from Palmia Observatory,
Last week at our Astrophysics SIG we watched a video from the series, “Life in our Universe” and we talked about how some microorganisms can survive in more extreme conditions than normally found on Earth.
The professor used the Tardigrade, aka Water Bear as an example.
| Screenshot from "Life in the Universe" video series (Source: The Teaching Company) |
He brought has daughters stuffed Water Bear toy for discussion and then showed us an image of a real Water Bear as found in nature.
| Water Bears from "Life in the Universe" video series (Source: The Teaching Company) |
During our discussion we wondered how we could find these tiny creatures, sub-millimeter in size, in our everyday natural environment. Yes, they can be found all around us.
Rather than poking around in the dirt, I wondered if I could just order some tardigrades from Amazon. You can just about anything on Amazon and when I checked, yes you order your own vial of them.
Well I couldn’t resist and just pushed order now. So a vial cost $25 and a little microscope starts at about $40. Now I’m used to looking through a telescope, but am going to have to learn how to set up the microscope and how to put a specimen in the microscope view. Luckily the tardigrade delivery was expected in a couple of days later so I get to practice a-bit.
| Resident Astronomer puts on his amateur microscopist hat (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
The microscope claims a magnification of up to 1000x, but I doubt if I can adjust the flimsy mount and focus and find something as small as a tardigrade, so I practices with a nickel. I took a photo of a nickel with my iPhone and then put it under the microscope and took an image which was WiFi transferred to my iPhone.
| First trial image using the small microscope (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
| Looking for a little more magnification (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
Wow, pretty good. I guess you could say I looked through a microscope and found God!
Then comparing the image sizes and measuring the size of the lettering, I estimate that my microscope magnification at that moment is about 24X. So if it had a tardigrade in view it might look like it was a centimeter long.
Well, the package finally arrived with tardigrades. Now I just have to find some time to dare to open up the vial and try to image one of them. Sadly, I’m too busy right now with packing for our flight to the southern hemisphere and might have to wait until we get back next year. I guess the tardigrades can survive during our absence and sorry to disappoint you if you wanted to see a real image.
| Who knew you can order Water Bears on Amazon? (Source: Palmia Observatory) |
See you later and hopefully with a real photo.
Until Next time,
Resident Astronomer George
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