Description

Location: Room 3.17, MRC Building

Upright Axioplan II research fluorescence microscope suitable for fluorescence and differential interference contrast (DIC) imaging of samples that have been fixed and mounted on slides. The 25x objective can also be used for water dipping provided the dish is wide enough to accommodate the lens. The fluorescence filters on the microscope can be used for conventional fluorophores in the blue, green, red and far red regions of the spectrum. Typical fluorophores would be DAPI, FITC, GFP, TRITC, Cy3, Alexa 647 and Cy5. CFP cannot be imaged with the filter sets on this microscope. YFP may be visible in the green channel. If you have an unusual dye then please email the light microscopy facility for advice.

In addition to the objective lenses the microscope stand has an optovar turret just below the eyepiece trinocular that can be used to provide extra magnification. There is a 0.63x demagnification lens between the microscope stand and the camera. This gives the widest field of view for the camera chip but reduces the resolution. You can improve the resolution by using the 1.6x optovar, since 0.63x times 1.6 = 1. You must make sure the optovar position matches the calibration applied in the software otherwise the image magnification will be wrong. Only the 1x and 1.6x magnifications are supported in the acquisition software.

There are neutral density (ND) filters near the focus on the right of the stand to reduce the intensity of the halogen lamp if it is too bright. The microscope has a QImaging QIClick greyscale CCD camera for high sensitivity fluorescence imaging. The Apple Mac computer currently has Openlab and Micro-Manager installed for image acquisition. Both icons are in the dock but note that Micro-Manager says 'ImageJ' when you hover the pointer over it.

Click on the Technical Resources link for more information about this microscope.