Peering into the ‘super microscope’

“Glass” (Courtesy: Neville Greaves/Aberystwyth University)

By Michael Banks

Make sure you do not miss a new exhibition at the Didcot Cornerstone Arts Centre in Oxfordshire, which starts today and runs until 9 January.

ISIS: Super Microscope features pictures of the ISIS neutron source taken by photographer Stephen Kill as well as images from some of the science performed at the facility.

The exhibition is aimed at raising the public’s awareness of the neutron source, which is at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire and operated by the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council.

Completed in 1984, ISIS remains Europe’s only source of pulsed neutron beams. In 2008 the facility completed the construction of a second target station, which will see the number of instruments double to over 40.

Every year hundreds of researchers come to ISIS from around the world to study a range of materials from magnetic materials to biological samples.

One of the images on display is called “Glass” (shown above), which shows the atomic structure of glass as inferred from data collected in neutron experiments.

The image below, which has the appearance of a petal, is taken from raw data collected by a neutron camera at ISIS.

The “flower” (Courtesy: Steve King/ISIS)

Flower

ISIS researcher Stephen King explains how the image was made using neutrons