Microscope Project: Insect Wings

As one of my first projects after cleaning up my old microscope, I decided to look at some insect wings I had found in my yard last summer: a cicada and butterfly. I posted about the cicada back in August shortly after I found it in the grass. The wing was the only part of the butterfly I found; the rest of the insect must have been dinner for some other creature. Both wings had some dust accumulated but made easy subjects. I looked at them with the magnifying glass first - in the same way I had looked at the peacock feathers last week.

The framework of the cicada wing near where it joined the body of the cicada was a nice green color and looked very sturdy in the magnifying glass (image above). When I looked at it with the microscope, bristles were evident and the color became even more sticking (three levels of magnification below).

The structure of the butterfly wing using the magnifying glass was just barely evident(image below). It already does not look as smooth as a butterfly wing observed without magnification.

The three levels of magnification show below makes the scales that for the butterfly wing more obvious!