Flower fluorescence and the power of the Eclipse MicroTent

Posted On: Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Here at NIGHTSEA we like to explore for fluorescence and take the opportunity whenever we can. Take an object, excite it either with a fluorescence excitation flashlight or under the stereo microscope, and see what happens. During a recent visit to St. Louis to demonstrate the Stereo Microscope Fluorescence Adapter and other NIGHTSEA products at the annual meeting of the Midwest Society for Developmental Biology I grabbed a begonia from a planting in front of my hotel.

I brought the flower to the exhibit area, which was in an open lobby with large windows, providing lots of ambient light. This is not usually the best location for fluorescence work, but the Eclipse MicroTent™ can take care of that. The pictures here show our stereo microscope without (left) and with the tent.

(Click on any image for larger view)

Below are the images of the begonia under white light, fluorescence without the tent, and fluorescence with the tent. You can see that the red background in the middle picture is due to ambient light and not fluorescence. In the ‘pure’ fluorescence image with ambient light removed only the beautiful yellow pollen fluorescence remains.

Equipment:

• Motic SMZ 168 trinocular stereo microscope
• NIGHTSEA Model SFA Stereo Microscope Fluorescence Adapter with the Royal Blue excitation/emission set
• White light head for SFA
• Canon EOS Rebel T2i
• Camera adapter from Martin Microscope
• NIGHTSEA Eclipse MicroTent™

Camera settings:

• Exposure time
  • Fluorescence – 1.3 sec
  • White light – 1/20 sec
• White balance
  • Fluorescence – Cloudy
  • White light – Auto
• ISO
  • 400 for all images