Fly Compound Eye — Calliphora vicina Study
31.00 د.ك
A blowfly (Calliphora vicina) compound eye photographed at 15:1 macro scale under UV illumination — the individual ommatidia revealed as hexagonally tiled optical units with UV-fluorescent corneal lenses.
Description
The compound eye of the blowfly (Calliphora vicina) is one of the most studied structures in sensory biology — each eye contains approximately 3,200 ommatidia, each a complete photoreceptor unit consisting of a corneal lens, a crystalline cone, and 8 photoreceptor cells sensitive to green, blue, and UV wavelengths. This photograph, made at 15:1 magnification using a UV fluorescence illumination configuration, reveals the corneal lenses of individual ommatidia as UV-fluorescent elements — the lens cornea fluoresceing blue-white under 365nm UV illumination, the hexagonal lens array creating a tiled pattern of considerable geometrical precision. The image reveals the optics of the compound eye through direct photographic visualization of individual lens elements.
