Dry Your Tears

As I paged through the most recent Discover magazine, I thought this was an illustration:


But looking closer and reading the caption, I learned it's a photo. My reproduction of it here (an iPhone photo of an offset-printed photo on glossy paper) is not the best way to see it, I'm sure, but it's still impressive.

This is a dried human tear, taken through a microscope by Norm Barker of Johns Hopkins University. It ranked among the top 10 in the 2018 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.