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You could be looking at a flare erupting from the surface of a planet,
while a space station hovers above with its attendant shuttle craft – or
you could be looking at a woodlouse, a diatom and some algal scales. ‘Space
Odyssey’ by Stephen Lowry of the University of Ulster is a montage made
from micrographs of biological specimens. ‘It was done as a kind of space
fantasy thing,’ says Lowry, who won $500 in this year’s Polaroid Photomicrography
Competition.

He explained that the ‘flare’ is in fact a sensory spine on the back
of a common woodlouse (Ligia oceanica). The ‘space station’ is a primitive
diatom of the species Stephanodiscus, and the ‘shuttle craft’ are scales
from algal cysts, dormant forms of algae. Lowry assembled the montage with
the help of a computer program for manipulating images called Adobe Photoshot.
All the components are to different magnifications.