An unprecedented beautiful snowflake macro camera appeared

After nearly two years of research, 62-year-old scientist and photographer Nathan Myhrvold released a series of images showing the beautiful "microscopic" structure of falling snowflakes in Alaska and Canada.

With a doctorate in physics and theoretical math from Princeton University, and 14 years of experience working at Microsoft, Myhrvold relied on his foundation to create a special camera system that allows snowflakes to be photographed with resolution up to 100 megapixels. It is described as "the highest resolution snowflake camera in the world".

This system understandably combines a microscope with a conventional camera, which has several parts working in parallel, allowing 100 shots of each snowflake to be taken consecutively before it melted.

For more than a century, photographing snowflakes has remained a challenge for photographers due to their small size and tendency to melt quickly.

To slow down the disintegration of snowflakes, the Myhrvold is equipped with an electrothermal cooling system. Besides, it has a carbon fiber frame and LED lights in place of the standard lamp, allowing less heat to be released.

Realizing that the glass face on the microscope is not the perfect material to retain heat, the researcher used artificial sapphire with a lower rate of thermal conductivity - similar to high-end dials instead.

Collecting samples to take pictures is also not easy. "Just one out of thousands of snowflakes is perfect enough for a photograph," Myhrvold said.

Sharing on his personal Facebook page, he wrote: "Usually they stick together, so you have to quickly process them and pick the best one to put on the microscope."

Close-up of a snowflake with 100MP resolution extremely detailed.

Myhrvold is still upgrading its snowflake camera and hopes one day it can connect to a 3D printer to create the most realistic snowflake models.

Marvin Fry

Update 02 February 2021