Image of the Week - 11 April 2006

160 Megapixel Stromatolite Photograph

Stromatolites are layered rocks thought to be produced by bacterial mats. During photosynthesis, cyanobacteria produce calcium carbonate which can cement trapped particles into layers of limestone. This image is a composite from 30 images taken on the Canon EOS 1Ds with MP-E 1-5x macro lens. It yields a 160 megapixel image with 60x effective magnification. Because the sample is not flat, parallax causes features to not line up perfectly across images.

Image Courtesy: Chas Conway and Glenn Fried

Contact: cconway@itg.uiuc.edu