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.
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