What is this beautiful, iridescent thing of many colors? It's exactly what nearly all of you guessed it was: scales. Not from a rainbow trout (good guess!), but from the wing of a Sunset Moth (Chrysiridia rhipheus). AliciaB was the first to guess that it was scales on a butterfly wing, and s-jhousekeeper was first to guess it was scales on a moth wing.
Since most of you guessed scales, we received only a few non-scaly guesses, which included: Velcro loops, fake fingernails, a close-up of a flower or a seed, carbon nanofibers, and silicon chips.
About This Image
This photomicrograph (a 25x magnification) is by Charles Krebs of Issaquah, Washington. It won Seventh Prize in the 2005 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition.
Here is how Krebs captured this image:
"In order to get the scales to show their iridescent colors, I cut a ping-pong ball in half and placed it over the slide mounted wing. A hole was cut to allow the microscope objective to see the subject. This tiny "diffusion dome" was then illuminated with fiber optic light guides. This is the best method I have found for recording the bright, iridescent colors of this subject."
See more beautiful photos of scales on Charles Krebs' web site. Don't miss this larger view of the moth wing.
More Photos and Information
The Sunset Moth is considered one of the most impressive and beautiful Lepidoptera. See:
Photograph credit: Wing Scales of Sunset Moth, © Charles Krebs 2005. Image used with permission.