During the monsoon every year, billions of Yellow Sulphur butterflies take flight for a few weeks and fill the air with thier golden magnificence. And fill the grille on my jeep with many of them cut short on thier journey. Taking advantage of this situation, we did some close up images of thier wings, and found stunning details of the wing scales in full color. Here is what we discovered.

Lets start with the lower magnification stereo microscope. At 7x, you can see the tip of the wing, some spots and the size of the tiny scales.

At 40x with the Stereo microscope, the scales are taking on some detail now.

Finally, last image with the Stereo microscope at the wing edge. The "fur" at the edge of a wing breaks up the air vortexes from the wing tips and allows more efficient flying with less energy. They are as you can see not hair, but longer scales!

Now on to shots with the high power monocular microscope. Some transmitted light shots here. At the lowest power of 60x, the scales are very clear now and we can see the serrated edges.

At 150x, the view is amazing. This transmitted light view shows now that each scale is ribbed and has rounded points on the serrations on the tips.

The Wing tip "fur" is clearly seen as enlongated scales here.

In "Dark Field Illumination" (a special attachment for the bottom of the microscope) the end fur is seen with a rosy coloration against a dark background.

Finally at 600x, the scales are amazing. Look how parallel the ridges are along thier length.

Close up at 600x of the fur on the tips of the wings.