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.

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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".

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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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."

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

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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