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The Microbial Ultra Deep Field, OlympusMons-UMONS

The Microbial Ultra Deep Field

The Microbial Ultra Deep Field, OlympusMons-UMONS

The Microbial Ultra Deep Field

Description

Astrophotography is a hobby. But, as a doctor in microbiology, I'm also used to count microbes from various environmental samples. And sometimes those two passions appear not to be as different as we might think they are!

The present submission depicts a few square millimeter area of a ... Petri dish (a kind of container holding growth medium in which cells can be cultured) ! All the observable structures are colonies of various fungal or bacterial microbes that we actually can find in soils. And, not so surprisingly, I was stunned to find out how much this field of microbes looked like the famous Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

This natural "ability" to associate a newly observed structure to an already known object or concept is known as a "pareidolia". The most common example of this phenomenon (that we probably all have already experienced) is the perception of animals or objects in cloud formations.

Feel free to ask any supplemental information.

Clear sky (and plates),

Quentin

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The Microbial Ultra Deep Field, OlympusMons-UMONS