Picture of a Single Atom Wins Science Photo Contest

Photography
#1

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.

Click the image and see the tiny white pixel in the very middle of the picture.

atom
atom.jpg801×800 179 KB

More here: https://petapixel.com/2018/02/12/picture-single-atom-wins-science-photo-contest/

1 Like
#2

It’s really pretty amazing that the camera could register light re-emitted by one strontium atom. I wonder how many photons it took to activate that single photodiode. It’s also worth noting that the pixel would be many hundreds of thousands of times larger than the atom itself.

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#3

Remarkable!