Desert Nights

A dark-field microscopic image showing ghostly, white crystalline structures growing upward from a horizontal base. The largest structure on the right resembles a delicate, frost-covered evergreen tree with branching, feathery limbs. Several smaller, wispy plumes of the same crystalline material are scattered to the left along the base, all set against a stark, pitch-black background.

Label: Desert Nights
Artist: Maggie Cooper
Description: This microscope image shows the growth of a nickel and magnesium hydroxide precipitate membrane within a microfluidic channel. These wholly inorganic, self-assembled structures have been studied since the days of the alchemists and are utilized now in the search for the origins of life on earth and elsewhere.
Type: DSLR
Artist Affiliation: Graduate Student
Department: Chemistry and Biochemistry
Area of Research: Nonlinear Dynamics, Physical Chemistry
Date: 2017