Newborn star absorbs interstellar dust

This optical microscope image shows the assembly of colloidal photonic crystals (green strips on the left side) onto a polymer microsphere.

The photonic materials are silica-coated magnetite nanoclusters and the polymer microspheres are made of Polyethylene Glycol Diacrylate. The sizes of microspheres are ∼100 µm.

Mingsheng Wang, University of California–Riverside, USA

Pop-art tree of life

A DNA liquid-crystal phase in a droplet of salmon DNA water solution.

The original photo was taken under a polarized light microscope with a full wave retardation plate, with magnification of 20×. The eight subsequent images were created in an image processing software.

Joanna Olesiak-Banska, Katarzyna Matczyszyn, and Marek Samoc, Wrocław University of Technology, Poland

The answers will be in the October 2013 issue.

June 2013 answer key