I get a lot of questions about the microscope I use in my viral video “First Animal to Survive in Space,” which I also use in my teachers’ Video Course “How to Find Tardigrades.”
Here is a picture of my scope:
I use this scope because it’s small and portable, it’s a field microscope for me. I already have a few different sizes of objective lenses, which manually screw into the barrel, so I’m all set magnification-wise. That is a bit of a pain when you compare it to a rotating turret in a compound microscope.
Photography is a challenge too, because the weight of the camera slides the barrel down and you lose focus. But it is portable and solar powered (hahaha!) and with some black electrical tape on an index card, you get darkfield lighting (really!).
I don’t recommend it for someone starting out, and I say that in my course, but since I do get questions about where to get one, I’ve provided a link and picture below.
This above is sold by United Scientific and comes with a 10x eyepiece and a 4x objective. So it’s limited unless you have your own assortment of objectives.
If you do get one of these- by all means send me an email and I’ll share some of my hacks for using this thing. My affiliate links are above. And on the bright side, this scope is sort of like the early microscopes used by the great scientists to whom we owe so much!
