New equipment in the lab

My lab just got a new piece of equipment. Heh - it feels a little odd to say that after so many years of cobbling out space and time in other peoples labs, but I digress...

I just got a new stereo microscope with a boom stand (makes it easy to zoom onto irregularly shaped rocks and fossils) and camera attachment. I set it up today. Everything appears to be working, although I have to check to see if I've set up the camera attachment incorrectly, as there was more spherical aberration than I was expecting.

Here are some of the test images:



Pretty good magnification at 45x (I plan on looking into higher magnification for some samples in the future)


A tiny shell of Vertigo sp., possibly V. cristata I didn't get a look at the aperture or lamellae in detail. But the size shape and color appear to match this species.



And an homage of sorts to Ron Schott's sandy "geomeme" series: what is it?



And one more: what is it, where is it from?