Entry Title: " micROCKScopica - Ocean Jasper"
Name: Bernardo Cesare, Italy
Category: Non-Professional, Micro


Entry Description: A series of photomicrographs taken from a fragment of "Ocean Jasper", an orbicular rhyolite from Madagascar. Images detail the mm-sized spherulitic "orbs", often with opaque-rich cores, resembling fantastic flowers.
Sample: 30 μm thin section under polarized transmitted light. Zeiss Axioscop 40 equipped with Axiocam MRc5 or Canon 550D. Width of view: 0.8 - 3.5 mm.

Bernardo Cesare is Professor of Petrology at the Department of Geosciences of the University of Padova, Italy. For his research he extensively uses photomicrographs and macrophotographs to describe the subjects of study and their morphological features. As a photographer with artistic intent, his rock photomicrographs have been displayed in photo galleries, at mineralogical and scientific exhibits and in Natural Sciences Museums in Italy, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, UK and USA, and published in photographic and popular magazines, and in geological journals. He won the MicroGeo2008 photo contest of the Russian Mineralogical Society, the 2nd and 3rd place at the 2008-9 Art in Crystallography Prize of the American Crystallographic Association, the 9th place at Nikon Small World contest 2009. Runner up at Bilder der Forschung 2010 and at WPGA 2010 - The Pollux Awards, and at Chasing the light – Patterns in Nature 2011. Merit award a WPGA 2011 - Beauty Around Us. 8th place at Nikon Small World contest 2011. In 2009 the starts the MicROCKScopica - Rock Art project (www.microckscopica.org).