Macro or micro?

Scientists Stephen Young and Paul Kelly have taken or processed these remarkable images. Stephen specialises in the extremely small. Paul takes the larger, landscape views. As this article in Smithsonianmag discusses, it isn't always as obvious which is which as one might think! The image above, for example could be fields in a countryside of interesting crops. It's actually a dragonfly wing, viewed through an electron microscope.

So, their competition is this. Can you tell which of the following are macro or micro? There are answers at the end.

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Answers:

1. Macro: Lakes surrounded by steep sand dunes in the Gobi Desert in China’s Inner Mongolia (Data downloaded from the European Space Agency. Additional image processing by Stephen Young.)

2. Micro: A polished mineral surface (Imaged and processed by Paul Kelly)

3. Macro: The Matusevich Glacier in East Antarctica (Original image: NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team. Additional image processing by Stephen Young.)

4. Macro: Sand dunes in Algeria’s Sahara desert (Landsat Thematic Mapper data downloaded from the Global Land Cover Facility. Image processing by Stephen Young.)

5. Macro: Cumulus clouds over the South Pacific Ocean (Image created by Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC, additional image processing by Stephen Young.)

6. Micro: A rotten human tooth (Imaged and processed by Paul Kelly)

7. Micro: The surface of a snake eggshell (Imaged and processed by Paul Kelly)

8. Micro: The interior of a leopard frog’s small intestine (Imaged and processed by Paul Kelly)

9. Macro: The Ganges-Brahmaptutra river delta in South Asia (Raw data downloaded from the Global Land Cover Facility and processed by Stephen Young)

10. Micro: A polished sample of boron (Imaged and processed by Paul Kelly)

11. Macro: White lines cutting through China’s Gobi Desert (Image downloaded from Satellite Image Corporation and cropped by Stephen Young)

12. Macro: Sea ice forming around Shikotan Island, at the southern end of the Kuril Islands, north of Japan (Image created by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon using data provided by the NASA EO-1 team. Downloaded and cropped from NASA’s Visible Earth website.)

13. Micro: The surface of a leopard frog’s tongue (Imaged and processed by Paul Kelly)

14. Macro: A Landsat thermal image of western Australia (Raw data downloaded from the Global Land Cover Facility and processed by Stephen Young)

15. Macro: A Landsat image from North Africa (Raw data downloaded from the Global Land Cover Facility and processed by Stephen Young)

All the images and answers reproduced from, and acknowledgements to: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/artscience/2013/10/macro-or-micro-test-your-sense-of-scale/#ixzz2iTAditUZ