The Cellar - Jan 29th, 2020 : An Atom

Have you seen an atom?
Trick question, of course I’ve seen atoms everything I look at is made of atoms, you can’t not see atoms.
The question was... have you seen AN atom?
Don’t be silly you can’t see AN atom they’re way too tiny. Itsy bitsy teeny weeny small.
Here’s a picture of a strontium atom.

http://cellar.org/img/atom.jpg

Quote:

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the UK today announced the winning photos of its national science photography competition. A remarkable photo of a single atom trapped by electric fields has just been awarded the top prize in a well-known science photography competition. The photo is titled “Single Atom in an Ion Trap” and was shot by David Nadlinger of the University of Oxford. Nadlinger’s grand prize photo shows an atom as a speck of light between two metal electrodes placed about 2mm (0.078in) apart.

The caption reads:
In the center of the picture, a small bright dot is visible – a single positively-charged strontium atom. It is held nearly motionless by electric fields emanating from the metal electrodes surrounding it. […] When illuminated by a laser of the right blue-violet color, the atom absorbs and re-emits light particles sufficiently quickly for an ordinary camera to capture it in a long exposure photograph.
This picture was taken through a window of the ultra-high vacuum chamber that houses the trap.

http://cellar.org/img/atom2.jpg

The photo was captured on August 7th, 2017, using a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR, a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens, extension tubes,
and two flash units with color gels.

link