As promised we are presenting a terrific 'fly-by', i.e. a microscopic flight centering around a water bear in the dry state, a so-called water bear 'tun'.

The experimental procedure is a little bit more complicated than with our usual photomicrographs.

Junior scientists, please listen! Do not hesitate to ask for your parents permission  before  starting with major improvements on their scientific Zeiss microscope.

Experimental set-up for the microscopic 'fly-by' video clip:
microscope #2 (right) is looking at the tardigrade on the turntable of instrument #1 (left)

The water bear tun is positioned on the cylindrical support. The only function of this support is to provide a little bit more space for microscope #2 which has to come very close. A simple torch illumination has been used in this case. The object had to be cleanly centered in the middle of the table otherwise it would have moved out of the image range during object rotation. Be wise and reserve some really quiet minutes for this adjustment work.
Afterwards a series of 72 still images is taken. After each photograph the table is rotated for 5 degrees. Care must be taken that the camera uses a fixed exposure time and a fixed white balance. Otherwise you will end up with a flickering video.

The still images can be combined to a video clip by free software or shareware like "Dave's targa animator" or "bmp2avi". You will be astonished by the visual depth and by the reflective properties of the clip when being compared to the stills.

Video clip: tardigrade in dry state (so-called 'tun') clinging to a moss plant.
Photographed in air.

Length ca. 0.15 mm.

File size 0.56 MB.

Microscope objective:
achromatic 10x/0.30 by the Meopta company.

© Text, images and video clips by  Martin Mach  (webmaster@baertierchen.de).
Water Bear web base is a licensed and revised version of the German language monthly magazine  Bärtierchen-Journal . Style and grammar amendments by native speakers are warmly welcomed.

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