Question on a cheap digital micro for non-professional use

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Darren Garrison - 26 Sep 2007 03:49 GMT

Okay, I have a low budget, but I'm looking for a way to get reasonable looking
photos of individual chondrules in meteorites into my PC. I'm looking at a
model of USB hand-held microscope. I know that I won't get anything approaching
professional level results from this-- but I'm wondering if anyone has tried
this microscope or a similar model and can tell me if it at least gives usable
results (unusable results include the output from the old Intel QX3 piece of
crap toy I tried using). I find lots of places selling this microscope, but no
reviews of the image quality:

http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/usb-digital-microscope-with-13
-m-pixel-resolution-video-clips/

Example of a meteorite in my collection I want to image-- whole slice is around
2 inches across. Individual chondrules are in the single-digit mm range. These
images were taken by laying it on a flatbed scanner and scanning at 1600dpi.

http://webpages.charter.net/garrison6328/tmp/nwa_987_a.JPG
http://webpages.charter.net/garrison6328/tmp/nwa_987_b.JPG

And I know I have no hopes of getting results like this cheaply, but here are
examples of chondrule photos:

http://www.meteorite.com/meteorite-gallery/meteorite-pages/pc-set-1.htm

http://www.meteorite.com/meteorite-gallery/meteorite-pages/pc-set-2.htm

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Greg - 26 Sep 2007 13:05 GMT

Hello Darren, to get really good images of chondrites and other
meteroites, you need a polarizing petrographic microscope with
transmitted and reflected light capabilities. Many labs have separate
scopes for each of these two functions, but some older machines such
as the Wild M21 and Leitz Dialux have incident accessories that are
easily switched on the same stand. But even older machines like those
remain expensive. If you just want some rough images of the surface
structures, a camera with a good macro lens on a tripod, or perhaps
your Chinese camera might do pretty well, but a polished surface is
needed to see much detail of grains and structures. With a glass
plate, polishing compounds, and some patience you can achieve a
reasonable polish yourself. However, I think that the images you
provided as examples of what you want to get were made from slides or
thin sections, which might have no cover slip but a polished exposed
rock surface. These are cut and ground to 0.03 mm thickness to see
into the translucent mineral grains, and also allowing a switch to
reflected light to study the surfaces of the opaque or metallic
grains. Good luck, Greg

> Okay, I have a low budget, but I'm looking for a way to get reasonable looking
> photos of individual chondrules in meteorites into my PC.

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Natural Science Forum / Physics / Optics / September 2007

Question on a cheap digital micro for non-professional use