This might just look like a microscope image of some strange, small life-form. But actually its a view of a massive 281-gigapixel image of a zebrafish embryo, which can be zoomed in on to show sub-cellular levels of detail.


The image is the product of a new technique called virtual nanoscopy, which is described in the Journal of Cell Biology. The process involves stitching together nanometer resolution photographs of what's placed under the microscope, and the result is an image which can be explored a little like a Google Map.

To give you some sense of scale, the whole embryo, pictured above, measures 1.5 millimeters in length. At the other end of the scale, the dark dots in the image below are cell nuclei. Mind. Blown. [JCB]


Images by Frank G.A. Faas et al