GIGAmacro’s Picture of the Month uses our own sample.

Take a look at this psychedelic image and guess what it is.

So what is it? It is a rock – a very thin piece of rock, but rock nonetheless. Andesite Thin Section, imaged at 10X with a Full Waveplate. We worked with Rob Meyer, our distributor in Houston, TX to develop the techniques to make this image. The thin section is lit from below by polarized flash, and the waveplate is inserted into a holder in the lens stack.

A common use of waveplates—particularly the sensitive-tint (full-wave) and quarter-wave plates—is in optical mineralogy. Adding waveplates between the polarizers of a petrographic microscope makes easier the optical identification of minerals in thin sections of rocks,[2] in particular by allowing deduction of the shape and orientation of the optical indicatrices within the visible crystal sections. This alignment can allow discrimination between minerals which otherwise appear very similar in plane polarized and cross polarized light. (source: wikipedia).

The original image is 1.94 gigapixels in size, 42,435 x 45,656 pixels at 58,521 pixels per inch. Made using 9,108 photos in 18 rows | 11 columns | 46 stacks.

As always, be sure to dig around by zooming and panning around in this image (or any others) in the GIGAmacro Viewer.

Learn more about this fascinating imagery and how it is made. Contact Meyer Instruments, Inc., (281) 579-0342 or visit their website at https://meyerinst.com.

Meyer Instruments, Inc. is an authorized dealer reseller of GIGAmacro products.