#hand lens

[mushrooms-and-millipedes]

There’s nothing quite like a good hand lens to help one appreciate God’s smaller creatures

[videoreligion]

The Strangeness (1985)

[geopsum]

Give this kid a hand... lens.

[therealuniverse]

How to take a selfie with a rover

The Curiosity Rover has 7 digital cameras on it. 4 of them are “Navcams” or Navigational cameras that allow the rover to observe and navigate along the surface, 2 of them are “Mastcams” and are positioned at the top of the mast to take high-resolution, color photos of the landscape, and one of them, the Mars Hand Lens Imager or MAHLI, is on the arm of the rover and able to adjust its zoom to both broad images and fine-scale resolutions up close to any rocks it observes. It is this last imager, MAHLI, that has been used to take the rover “Selfies”. 

To capture an image of the rover itself, the rover extends its arm and rotates it so that Mahli faces back at the rover. It then moves the arm in a proscribed set of motions, creating a panorama that can be stitched together once the images are transmitted back to Earth. As the rover was doing one of these “selfies” earlier this year, one of the other cameras, the black and white Navcam, took this series of photos of the position of the arm as it wandered its way through that photograph sequence. The selfie that was produced is shown at the end. Notice how the large arm with various analytical tools and the drill does not appear in the selfie? This video is why – the arm itself is behind MAHLI, shifting position to move the camera. -JBB Video credit: https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/24834/navcam-movie-of-how-curiosity-takes-a-selfie/

[thehandlens-blog]

Explore - The William & Lynda Steere Herbarium

Explore our collections, and the stories they tell, like never before.

It’s Endangered Species Day (17 May).

Animals are nice and all, but you can read about some plants, algae, and fungi that either need some love, or have been loved too much.

[bio-child]

Protostropharia semiglobata

[averypedestriansnail]

Lichen through a hand lens with a macro camera lens.

[insomnomaniac]

Critical Mass, 20x.