Andreas Nolte

Non-Laser Light Sources for Three-Dimensional Microscopy

The first light source used for microscopy was the sun and the second was a candle flame. Both are hot plasmas that emit essentially black-body radiation (Fig. 6.1) with the addition of a few elemental lines. The introduction of light sources powered by electricity, both arcs and incandescent filaments, added a new level of convenience and flexibility but required improvements in the light-harvesting optics needed to illuminate the imaged area with light that was both intense and uniform.