All of us are quite familiar with the appearance and visibility of stars on a dark night, this despite their vast distances from the Earth. Stars can be readily observed at night primarily because of the stark contrast between their faint light and the black sky. Stars are shining both night and day, but they […]

A darkfield microscope is a magnifying device in which objects are lit at a very low angle from the side so that the background appears dark and the objects show up against this dark background. Therefore, darkfield is the method whereby the sample being viewed is actually in front of a dark background and light […]

A darkfield microscope is a microscope intended to permit diversion of light rays and illumination, from the side, so that details appear light against a dark background as opposed to light passing straight through the specimen. If bright lights from the microscope pass directly through the specimen, the heat from the light source will kill […]

Closely related to darkfield illumination is the Rheinberg illumination. The light stop is replaced by colored filter material. Surrounding this filter are filters of one or more colors that contrast with the color of the central filter. The central filter will be the same size as a darkfield stop would be for the objective in […]

An optical microscopy illumination technique used to enhance the contrast in unstained samples is called darkfield microscopy. It works on the principle of illuminating the sample with light that will not be collected by the objective lens, so not form part of the image. This produces the classic appearance of a dark, almost black, background […]

Darkfield illumination is most readily set up at low magnifications even up to 100x, even though it can be used with any dry objective lens. Any time you wish to view everything in a liquid sample, debris and all, dark field is best. In darkfield microscopy, to view a specimen in dark field, an opaque […]