Your microscope
What you see under the microscope · Stereo microscope
An ant under a stereo microscope: what you can see
A black garden ant worker, about 4 mm long, on the stage. The stereo microscope (also called a dissecting microscope) needs no sample preparation: you look at the whole object, in relief and with room to handle it.
Choose the model and the light in the panel.
10×: the whole animal
At low magnification the whole ant fits in the field: head, thorax and abdomen, the six legs and the two antennae.
20×: the parts of the body
You can clearly make out the head, the thorax with the legs and the abdomen, joined by a narrow waist with a small scale.
40×: the head
The twelve-segment antennae, the compound eye made of facets and the toothed mandibles. At this magnification you can already see the hairs.
The head, up close
The first segment of the antenna, the scape, is almost a millimetre long. The mandibles have eight or nine teeth, and the eye more than a hundred facets.
3D view: with the stereo microscope you see it in relief, but from above.
Which stereo microscope do you need?
For insects, plants, minerals or parts, 10× to 40× is the usual range. A zoom lets you go from one to the other without changing objectives, and incident and transmitted light lets you work with both opaque and transparent objects.
Which microscope do I need?Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a stereo microscope and a microscope?
The stereo microscope, or dissecting microscope, gives a three-dimensional image of whole objects at low magnification (usually from 10× to 40×). The biological microscope looks through thin samples and reaches 400× or 1000×.
What magnification do you need to see an ant clearly?
At 10× you see it whole; at 40×, the details of the head: antennae, eyes and mandibles.
What are incident and transmitted light?
Incident light illuminates from above and shows the surface; transmitted light illuminates from below and outlines the silhouette. Many stereo microscopes have both.
How this simulation is made
It is not a photograph: it is a calculated model. Magnification, field of view and resolution come from each microscope's spec sheet; the sample measurements come from the sources cited below.
| What | How it is calculated | What is approximate |
|---|---|---|
| Magnification and field of view | Magnification = eyepiece × zoom (or objective). Field of view = eyepiece field number ÷ zoom magnification. | Exact according to the spec sheet. |
| Ant measurements | Worker of 4.2 mm (3.5–5.0), head 0.9 mm wide (0.61–1.21), scape of 0.94 mm, 12-segment antenna and mandible with 8–9 teeth. | Length of the funiculus and the legs, and body proportions, without a source: chosen by resemblance. |
| Compound eye | 110 facets. | Hobbyist source (≈120); AntWiki only states more than 100 for the genus. |
| Hairs | Erect hairs on the head and tibiae, and dense whitish pubescence. | Placed at random. |
| Light | Incident, transmitted or both, according to each instrument's spec sheet. | Intensities chosen by eye. |
Sources
- Spec sheets of the Letscopes stereo microscopes.
- Lasius niger (AntWiki) and genus Lasius (AntWiki).
- Eye facets: Antnest (hobbyist source).
Other samples
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