Stereoscopes

Stereoscopes are a subset of macroscopes (ie scopes for looking at quite big things). Perhaps we shouldn't have one in the microscopy facility then? The "stereo" bit refers to the fact that your left and right eyes get a slightly different view and things look 3D. Our stereoscope has two cameras and imaging modes:

• A fluorescence camera (sensitive and black and white) - the system can produce green or red fluorescence images and the principles are the same as the fluorescence system above
• A colour camera for taking pictures of transmitted or reflected light images. Both of these types of images involve illumination with white light, transmitted goes through the sample, reflected light is shone from an angle. You can even do a mixture of both.

The stereoscope can produce total magnification of between 12x and 150x (so the maximum magnification is equivalent to a 15x objective on a fluorescence scope).