There’s a new movie star in town – and he’s microscopic.
Time-lapse video shows blood pulsating through the vessels of 72-hour old chick embryo, all magnified so viewers can see every detail of the tiny spectacle.
The astonishing video won Nikon’s first-ever Small World in Motion Photomicrography Competition, which called for visually outstanding movies that fused science and art.
Anna Franz, the creator of the winning entry, cut into a chicken egg and injected ink into the embryo’s artery to better visualize its blood system. It was her first experience with digital time-lapse photography through a microscope.
“This movie not only demonstrates the power of the heart and the complexity of vasculature of the chick embryo, but also reflects the beauty of nature’s design,” said Franz, a researcher at the University of Oxford.
Other top-scoring entries also provided glimpses into rarely seen acts of nature. One captured the movement of mitochondria in sensory neurons inside a zebra fish larva’s tail, while another zooms in on a waterflea-daphnia playing with a volvox, a type of green algae.
Nikon Small World in Motion was created as a sister competition to the company’s preexisting Nikon Small World brand, in an attempt to incorporate the new trend of digital photomicrography.
“We receive spectacular images for the Nikon Small World Competition, and it is with great excitement that we expand the competition to accommodate moving images and time-lapse photography,” said Eric Flem, Communications Manager, Nikon Instruments.
“Anna Franz sets a high standard for applying difficult scientific technique to create a truly captivating image. We look forward to the dynamic images the participants of Small World in Motion will produce in the future.”