Microscopes

To touch grass, venture outdoors and take a break from doom-and-gloom news, what can one do to pass the time without a smartphone? Perhaps they can take a peek into the world outside with Bubo, a 2-in-1 digital microscope currently on Kickstarter.

There's a lot going on around us that we can't see. Cheap desktop microscopes can provide access to such secret worlds for regular folks like you and me, and tech company BeaverLab has launched a smart digital model called the Darwin MX Pro.

A photography competition celebrating microscopic images has unveiled this year’s winners. A startling cross-section shot of a flower was awarded the fifth annual Evident Image of the Year Award, leading a mesmerizing gallery of miniature marvels.

Six years on from the first iMicro smartphone microscope, comes the iMicro Q3p, a tiny tool that makes microscopy inexpensive, portable and accessible. It also has polarization, offering incredible detail in materials such as crystals and minerals.

From a baby tardigrade riding a nematode, to water droplets evaporating from the wing scales of a peacock butterfly, the winners of this year's Nikon Small World In Motion video microscopy competition let you see the unseen in astounding detail.

Here's a feast for your eyes: mesmerizing footage of circuit boards being soldered, massively magnified under an ultra- powerful microscope. It's a fun watch, even if you've never picked up a soldering iron before.

You may have seen this video doing the rounds; it peers through the lens of a microscope at a smartphone chip and starts zooming in, giving you a visceral sense of just how insanely tiny today's transistors have become.

The Centenary Institute has announced the winner of its When Art Meets Science competition, showcasing the intersection between ground-breaking medical research and stunning images. But you can cast your vote for the best image in the People’s Choice Awards.

From an igniting match to a mouse embryo and a micrometeorite, the winners of the annual Nikon Small World photomicrography competition have been unveiled. As always, this year’s stunning images capture the wonder of the tiny hidden universe around us.

From slime mold resembling a cute mushroom to an unprecedented look at the embryonic hand of a gecko, this year’s winners of the Nikon Small World photo contest reveal the stunning sights of a hidden microscopic universe.

The Nikon Small World in Motion contest delivers a mind-bending array of videos highlighting the microscopic world. This year features psychedelic salts, a nightmarish feeding session and a spectacular depiction of neural cells in a fish embryo.

Ever wondered what the inside of a dinosaur bone looks like in close-up? Or how about a few grains of pollen caught in knots of cotton fabric? Wonder no more thanks to hand-picked highlights from this year’s incredible Nikon Small World Competition.