(Untitled)

[kejlina]

I like taking pictures down the microscope. Last year, Julia and I were at a thrift store and I found a toy microscope for two dollars, so I bought it and set up a peripheral blood smear on it.

The magnification was only 100x and the resolution was pretty poor, but the photo looks pretty neat.

Comments

[queerbychoice]

What are the bluish-purple things inside one of the red blood cells?

[kejlina]

The larger cell is actually a type of white blood cell called a neutrophil. It looks pink and blue like that because the slide has been stained with a romanowsky stain. The bluish-purple part is the nucleus :)

[queerbychoice]

Wouldn't that mean it has three nuclei?

[kejlina]

It would appear that way, but the lobes are actually connected by thin chromatin strands which can be very hard or impossible to see with brightfield microscopy.