Mini mussels swim into the limelight

A vibrant image of larval mussels scooped a prize in this year’s annual microscopy competition sponsored by camera manufacturer Nikon. Gerben Oppermans, a microscopist at the Buxton Micrarium in Derbyshire, created the image by passing polarised light through a microscope slide of the mussels, which are about 1 millimetre across. “To the naked eye they look like tiny white flakes, but in polarised light they produce these beautiful colours,” he says. The mussels’ shells split light to produce the multicoloured fringe effects. The image is one of several taken by Oppermans of the exhibits at the Micrarium, where visitors can view tiny objects and organisms through microscopes. In January the Micrarium will move to the Eureka children’s museum in Halifax.