As regular readers will know I have been doing a lot of microscopy research recently. I’ve ended up producing a lot of very high resolution images of different diatoms and I’ve been asked what I was planning on doing with them – was I going to produce a book or something else. I’ve settled on making a new website which is now live. It is called Diatomimaging.com (click on the link to access it).

The site is a virtual museum, with a blend of science and hopefully some art as well. On there are my images of diatoms, along with details on how they were taken. I’ve also included photos of the slide that they were imaged from. I’ve typically found that exisiting sites would share images of diatoms, but with little information on how they were taken, and often the details of the slide and slide maker were omitted. These slides and the subjects they hold are culturally and scientifically significant, with some diatom collection areas no longer even producing new material for people to work with (Oamaru in New Zealand for example).

My goal with the site is to share images of these amazing structures with the wider scientific community, but also make them available to anyone who finds beauty in nature. I would like to hope that it will prompt others with collections of these wonderful subjects to share what they have as well. Who knows, you may have a new species waiting to be discovered on a slide….