winner of the scientific photography contest; Image of an atom trapped in an ion trap
An Amazing Image Of An Atom Being Trapped Has Been Released Using An Ordinary Camera.
An image of a trapped atom wins a science photography contest. This photo depicts a few electric fields, which is very interesting and surprising. David Nadlinger of the University of Oxford took this photo.
According to EPSRC, this image was taken from the window of the vacuum chamber. To take this image, blue-violet laser light was first used to illuminate the atom, which collected and then emitted light particles.
This process produces enough light for a standard camera to capture this image.
David Nadlinger, the winner of this competition, says about the idea of this photo:
Seeing an atom with the naked eye is a natural bridge between the real and quantum worlds. A calculation on paper showed that I could do this, and when I went to the lab one day off, I got this particular image of a tiny blue dot.
Nadlinger’s large photo shows an atom trapped in the photo as a dot between two metal electrodes about two millimeters across. You have to zoom in on the image to see this atom; this image is incredible.
This photo was taken on August 7, 2017, using a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR camera, a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens, extension tubes, and two flashes with color gels.
